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Vol. Ill, No. 2 January, 1918

Smith College Studies
in History

JOHN SPENCER BASSETT
SIDNEY BRADSHAW FAY

Editors

FINANCES OF EDWARD VI
AND MARY

By FREDERICK CHARLES DIET2

NORTHAMPTON, MASS.

Published Quarterly by the
Department of History of Smith College

Entered as second class matter December 14, 1915, at the postofBc© at
Northampton, Mass., under the act of August 24, 1912.

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SIDNEY BRADSHAW FAY

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Vol. Ill, No. 2 January, 1918

Smith College Studies
in History

JOHN SPENCER BASSETT
SIDNEY BRADSHAW FAY

Editors

FINANCES OF EDWARD VI
AND MARY

By FREDERICK CHARLES DIETZ

NORTHAMPTON, MASS.

Published Quarterly by the
Department of History of Smith College

CONTENTS

PAGE
BlBI^IOGRAPHICAIv INTRODUCTION 61

CHAPTER I
The Scotch and French Wars, 1547-1550 69

CHAPTER II
Northumberland's Failure, 1550-1553 88

CHAPTER III
Reconstruction Under Mary, 1553-1558 103

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

For information about the history of Tudor finances students
go to Stephen Dowell's elaborate general work, "A History of
Taxes and Taxation in England" (4 volumes, London, 2nd Edi-
tion, 1888). In the chapters dealing with the Tudor period Mr.
Dowell's hypotheses are incorrect, and his facts very incomplete.
Above all he is interested in the "how" of things, and pays little
attention to the "why." Some general observations supplement-
ary to Dowell are made by W. Cunningham in "The Growth of
English Industry and Commerce" (3 volumes, Cambridge, 5th
Edition, 1910).

A few special phases of the subject have received detailed
study. George Schanz treats the commercial policy of Henry VII
and Henry VIII, and incidentally the history of the customs
revenues of their reigns in his masterly "Englische Handelspolitik
gegen Ende des Mittelalters" (2 volumes, Leipsic, 1881). A
valuable contribution is N. S. B. Gras's little article, "Tudor
'Books of Rates': a Chapter in the History of the English Cus-
toms," (Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XXVI [1912-13],
pp. 766-775). Like the customs, the coinage has been specially
investigated. The best account dealing with the period covered
by this essay is Professor C. W. C. Oman's "The Tudors and
the Currency" (Translations of the Royal Historical Society,
New Series, Vol. IX).

On the organization of the English revenue system in the
Middle Ages much has been written, but little attention has been
paid so far to the revolutionary changes made in that organization
under the Tudors. "The Ancient Exchequer of England," by
F. S. Thomas (London, 1848), embodies a shrewd suspicion of
the character of these changes ; but Mr. Thomas had at his dis-
posal only a few of the documents which have since been made
accessible. Very recently there seems to have arisen in England
a new interest in the organization of the revenue system in
Tudor times. In 1916 appeared Mrs. Eric George's "Note on

62 Smith CoIvL^g^ Studies in History

the Origin of the Declared Account" (English Historical Re-
view, Vol. 31, pp. 41-58), and more recently A. P. Newton pub-
lished his "The King's Chamber under the Early Tudor s" (En-
glish Historical Review, Vol. 32, pp. 348-372). Mrs. George's
article is deficient in that she has not gone back far enough, nor
far enough afield to discover the real nature or the origin of the
declared account, which are to be found in the most unsuspected
classes of records. Mr. Newton is familiar with all the important
records, especially the account books of the Treasurer of the
Chamber; but he has not analyzed closely enough their entries.

In the nature of things, then, the materials from which this
essay on the finances of Edward VI and Mary is built must be
almost exclusively documentary. Of the printed documents, by
far the most valuable are the *'Acts of the Privy Council," owing
to the very important part played by the council in the govern-
ment of the country and the formulation of policies during the
two reigns. Upon important matters, however, in which it is
certain that the council acted, the registers are provokingly silent.
It is annoying, too, to find mention made of minutes and letters
which have disappeared. Of almost equal worth for the reign
of Edward VPs latter years, is "Edward VFs Journal" (Clar-
endon Historical Society Reprints, 1884), and those other pa-
pers which he drew up with his own hand, published, together
with his journal, as the "Literary Remains of Edward VI" (2
volumes, Roxburghe Club, 1857). As each new financial meas-
ure was explained to the king, it was noted in his journal. In
the last year of his life, when the financial situation was very
bad, he drew up papers of suggested remedies.

The "Statutes of the Realm" are of course very valuable.
The preambles of acts, especially of the subsidy act of 1553,
must however be used with great caution. The "Journal of the
House of Commons" occasionally hints at opposition to royal
measures, but the nature of the debates is never indicated. The
"Journal of the House of Lords," more unsatisfactory still, gives
most of its space to the long lists of the peers present at each
session, with a bare table of the bills taken up.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 63

The great collections of manuscripts and documents calen-
dared in the "Historical Manuscripts Commission's Reports"
are very disappointing, yielding almost nothing for the purposes
of this paper. The contemporary chronicles, like the "Greyfriars*
Chronicle" and "Wriothesley's Chronicle," published by the
Camden Society, are almost equally valueless. The "Calendar of
State Papers — Domestic," covering Edward's and Mary's reigns
is not more than a finding list: the original documents in the
Record Office in London must be used in all cases.

The most important sources of this paper are unprinted
documents. These are, first, the state papers in the Record
Office, together with the manuscripts in the British Museum
gathered in the Lansdowne, Cottonian, Harleian and other col-
lections. These consist of letters exchanged by the great gov-
ernment officials on the business of the state, their private memo-
randa, of minutes of the work of committees of the Privy
Council, of accounts which have strayed from their proper places,
and of transcripts of accounts, made in the time of James I, the
originals of which are now lost.

The second class of unprinted documents consists of the
great series of accounts of the financial system. To understand
them, a brief description of the organization of the financial
system in the middle Tudor period is essential. By the develop-
ment of the changes initiated by Henry VH, the revenue system
consisted in Edward VI's reign of a number of treasuries and
courts of audit, independent of each other. These were the Ex-
chequer, the Court of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Treasury of
the Chamber, the Court of Augmentations and Revenue, the
Court of First Fruits and Tenths, and the Court of Wards and
Liveries. At the head of the system was the king, or in his
place the council by delegation of crown powers in Henry VHI's
time. To the crown in council each court was responsible for
the accounts of all receipts and disbursements of its revenues.
These accounts were rendered to the council in the form of the
declaration of accounts of the chief officers of the several courts.
In the Exchequer this declaration was made in Henry VIFs,

64 Smith College Studies in History

Henry VHI's and Edward VFs reigns by the chancellor of the
Exchequer, in the form of the "Declaration of the State of the
Treasury," beautifully written on vellum. One volume only re-
mains for Edward VFs time, for the year, Michaelmas, 1550-
1551 (Record Office, Exchequer of Receipt, Declarations of the
State of the Treasury, Vol. 27). When the disbursements of
the exchequer became more diversified after 1544, a supple-
mentary paper was drawn up by the clerk of the chancellor, the
auditor of the receipt, showing the disbursements especially upon
warrants of the council, which were not included in the vellum
declarations. A volume of these auditor's declarations of issues
is preserved for the years 1544 to 1560 (R. O., Exch. of
Rec, Misc., 259), and is the only source for the most important
Exchequer disbursements in these years. In Mary's time the
vellum declaration of the chancellor was replaced by a smaller
paper declaration of the clerk of the pells, showing receipts only.
The volume containing the receipts of the years 1556, 1557 and
of Hilary term, 1558, is preserved. (R. O., Exch. of Rec,
Declaration Books, Pells, Vol. 1.) There may have been a
parallel declaration of receipts made by the chancellor's clerk,
the auditor of the receipt, since there is preserved a series of such
declarations for Elizabeth's reign. The chief source for Ex-
chequer receipts in our period is a very much condensed Jacobean
copy of Exchequer receipts from Easter, 1547, to Michaelmas,
1555, preserved in the British Museum (Lansdowne MSS., Vol.
156, fr. 168).

The declaration of the receiver-general of the Duchy of
Lancaster, showing his total receipts and expenditures for the
year, and the natures of these, was a thin book of large vellum
sheets, entitled Compotus. Except for the year 1549-1550, the
series is complete for the two reigns, with two small paper dup-
licates. (R. O., Duchy of Lancaster, Accounts Various, Bundle
Vni, 13 volumes.)

The Treasurer of the Chamber lost his former importance
with the merger of the Court of General Surveyors, of which he
was treasurer, with the Court of Augmentations on January 1,

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 65

1547. He remained treasurer only of the revenue of the Han-
aper of Chancery. To enable him to meet his payments to the
king's servants and officials additional sums were issued to him
from the Exchequer and other courts. One of his account books
for the year 1547-1548 is published in the Trevelyan Papers,
Volume 67, of the Camden Society Publications, pp. 191ff. No
declaration of his exists in the latter part of Henry VHI's reign,
or in Edward VI's time, but there is an account for the years
1557 to 1579. (R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 541.)

The treasurer of the Court of Augmentations prepared for
the council a Compotus of the receipts and issues of his office.
Owing to the immense amount of business noted, the Compoti
of the Augmentations Court are great unwieldly volumes of large
leaves fastened at the top. The series is complete to the disso-
lution of the court in 1554, and its amalgamation with the ex-
chequer. (R. O., Augmentations Office, Treasurer's Rolls of
Accounts, numbers 4-10 inclusive.)

The accounts of the treasurer of the Court of First Fruits
and Tenths are elusive. There is in the British Museum a
Jacobean copy of the declaration of the treasurer for the year
Christmas, 1547, to Christmas, 1548 (Lansdowne MSS., Vol.
156, f. 164). In 1554 the court was amalgamated with the Ex-
chequer. Remembrancers of First Fruits and Tenths conducted
the former business of the court : their account for Mary's reign
is preserved. (R. O., Exchequer, Queen's Remembrancer, Ac-
counts 520/28.

The general accounts of the Court of Wards and Liveries were
delivered to the council in the form of the Compotus of the re-
ceiver-general of the court. For the two reigns the compoti are
collected in several volumes; and bound with them in the same
volumes are the rough entry books of the receiver-general's clerk.
(R. O., Court of Wards, Misc. Books, Vols. 363, 364, 365,
366, 367.)

Before the crown in council were compelled to appear also
the officials entrusted with the expenditures of royal money for
special purposes, like the treasurers of war and the surveyors of

66 Smith College: Studies in History

victuals, the special agents of the government abroad who man-
aged the foreign loans and purchased supplies, and the treasurer
of the mint. Their accounts were examined and audited in
Edward VFs reign by the two auditors of the prests who were
then attached to the Court of Augmentations ; in Mary's time by
specially appointed auditors. The accounts, drawn up in a very
special form, in triplicate, and in English, were known as "Dec-
larations of the Account," and differed essentially in form and
simplicity from the old Latin Compoti of the Exchequer. When
approved by the auditors they were formally passed by commis-
sioners of the council appointed from time to time, or on specific
occasions for this purpose, and signed or even sealed by them.
The most important series of accounts of this kind are those of
Sir Edmund Pekham, High Treasurer of the Mint. He ac-
counted for not only all the profits of the debasement of the
coinage, but for forced loans, and for money coming from the
sale of lands. He disbursed very large sums for many special
purposes for which the ordinary treasurers could not provide.
(R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2077, 2079, 2080.) Of
great value too are the accounts of Sir Thomas Gresham, and
other agents, showing their loan transactions in Flanders. (R. O.,
Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 14, 17, 18, 23, 26, 43.) For the
study of the foreign loans these accounts are supplemented by the
original cancelled bonds and sureties given by the crown and the
City of London to the Flemish creditors. (R. O., Treasury of
Receipt, Letters Patent for Loans, Bundle 4.) Other declara-
tions of accounts are those of the various treasurers of war.
(R. O., Declared Accounts, Audit Office, Bundle 283.)

From time to time the council ordered special statements of
the revenues of the whole kingdom, or special reports, to be
presented to itself. Such are the "Brief declaration of the whole
military and naval expenses incurred by Henry VHI and Ed-
ward VI during their wars with France and Scotland" (State
Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XV, No. 11), the register of
all gifts, exchanges and purchases of crown lands in every year
of King Edward VI (State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 67

XIX), the report on the state of all the revenues for the year
1550-1551 prepared by a special committee of the council (Brit-
ish Museum, Additional MSS., 30,198; Harl. MSS., 7883,
No. 1) ; and the list of all the fees and charges of the govern-
ment in Edward's reign (British Museum, Stow MSS., 571,
No. 1). To these may be added possibly the account of arrears
of first fruits and tenths due from the incumbents of various
benefices drawn up by the Treasurer of First Fruits and Tenths
in 1552 (State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XVI), and
the valors of crown lands in the several counties dating from
Mary's reign (R. O., Augmentation Office, Misc. Books, 167).
The several courts and treasuries kept varied series of ac-
count books and rolls of their own. For the purposes of this
essay the most important of these are the rolls of the Exchequer
of Account. The Pipe Roll is continued through the period;
but as only the formal feudal revenues were entered in it, it is of
little value. In Edward Ill's time accounts foreign to the sheriff's
jurisdiction, which had previously been placed at the end of the
accounts in the Pipe Roll, were enrolled on the Roll of Foreign
Accounts. In Henry VII's time many of the accounts previously
entered in the Foreign Roll were transferred elsewhere ; through
Edward VI's reign the foreign roll affords nothing. But in the
directions and regulations which Mary provided for the amalga-
mation of the Augmentations and Exchequer courts, she directed
that accounts passed by the commissioners of the council should
be enrolled in the Foreign Roll. Only a few such accounts were
so enrolled ; but a number of accounts, like those of the clerk of
the Hanaper of Chancery, of the chief butler, and of the mayor
and constable of the Society of the Staple reappear. (R. O.,
Exchequer, Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, Foreign Roll,
No. 120). The customs dues and subsidies were enrolled in the
customs rolls (R. O., Exchequer, L. T. R., Enrolled Accounts,
Customs), the subsidies and fifteenths and tenths granted by
parliament in the subsidy rolls (R. O., Exchequer, L. T. R., En-
rolled Accounts, Subsidies, No. 44), and the accounts of the ex-
penditures in the royal household and wardrobe in the wardrobe

68 Smith Coi.i.e;ge; Studie:s in History

and household rolls. The roll covering the period is misplaced;
instead of being roll No. 11 in the Lord Treasurer's Remem-
brancer's office enrollments of household and wardrobe accounts,
it is found among the declared accounts in the Pipe Office (R.
O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, No. 1795). This roll con-
tains the complete household accounts from 1547 to 1601, but
only a few wardrobe accounts. The original wardrobe compoti
not enrolled are preserved among the declared accounts (R. O.,
Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, No. 3027-3032).

Finances of Edward VI and Mary

CHAPTER I
The: Scotch and French Wars, 1547-1550

The complicated nature of the finances of the English gov-
ernment during the Tudor period is not yet understood, nor is
the importance of their bearing upon the general history of the
times recognized. The reign of Henry VH and the early part of
Henry VHFs reign saw the erection of a new revenue system,
adequate for a moment to the needs of the government. Be-
tween 1542 and 1553 this new system was disintegrated and its
adequacy destroyed. This nullification of the work of Henry VII
and of Cromwell, as it was completed in the reign of Edward VI,
and the first attempts to rehabilitate the remaining resources of
the state in Mary's reign are the subjects of this essay. The
events of these years have a wider interest, in that they serve as
a basis for understanding the parsimony of Elizabeth, and the
difficulties of James I.

In his admirable volume in the "Political History of Eng-
land" series, Mr. A. F. Pollard thus summarizes financial con-
ditions at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign: "The financial
situation was deplorable. Royal expenditure, which was about
£56,000 a year at the end of Henry VIIFs reign, had risen to
to £65,000 before the end of Edward VFs, and during Mary's
had grown to il38,000 in 1554-55, i213,000 in 1555-56, £216,000
in 1556-57 and £345,000 in 1557-58. In the last financial half-
year of Mary's reign, from Easter to Michaelmas, 1558, she had
spent £267,000, or at the rate of £534,000 a year, and she left a
debt of nearly a quarter of a million. To meet this unprecedented
outlay, parliament in 1558 had granted one subsidy,^ one-tenth,

*The subsidy was a tax of two, three or four shillings in the pound of
the value of income from land, payable in two, three or four years, to-
gether with a tax of two shillings and four pence in the pound of the
value of personal property, payable in two years. Individuals paid accord-
ing to their greatest worth either in lands or goods, on either their lands
or goods, but not on both.

70 Smith Coli^ege; Studies in History

and one-fifteenth. 2 The old tenth and fifteenth had through the
power of resistance possessed by the shires and towns on which
it was levied been reduced to a fixed sum of about i32,000,*
which far from increasing with the wealth of the country,
rapidly decreased in value with the rise in prices and decline in
purchasing power of gold and silver owing to the influx of prec-
ious metals from the New World. The subsidy designed to meet
this growing deficiency produced at first about £120,000; but,
in spite of its assessment upon the weaker individual, and of its
collection by royal officials instead of by the nominees of mem-
bers of parliament, the subsidy tended to diminish in produc-
tiveness. Paget in 1544 calculated that a subsidy would yield
i 100,000; probably it yielded less in 1558, and at the end of
Elizabeth's reign produced only £80,000. The clergy at the same
time granted eight shillings in the pound, which may have
amounted to some i35,000. The parliamentary grants of 1558
would thus have realized about i 160,000, and it is little wonder
that Philip complained of their inadequacy. The forced loan
yielded i 109,000, the ordinary feudal dues were worth perhaps
i50,000 a year; and the customs duties even after the increases
imposed by Mary, were farmed at only £24,000. These would
bring the revenue in 1558 up to about £345,000; but the deficit,
even when reduced by the profits of jurisdiction and by fines for
renewal obtained through the revocation of all grants and
patents from the crown, cannot have been much less than
£150,000; and Mary's expenditure during her last year must have
exceeded her revenue by nearly 40 per cent. Her predecessors,
Henry VHI and Edward VI, had made a fraudulent profit of
something like a million by the debasement of the coinage; but
that source of revenue was exhausted, and in 1558 Mary was

'The fifteenth and tenth was originally a tax of the fifteenth part of
the value of movable goods of those persons living in the shires, and of
the tenth part of such value of persons living in cities or on the ancient
demesne lands.

* The yield of a fifteenth and tenth was actually only £29,000. See ap-
pendix.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 71

with difficulty raising loans at the ruinous rate of 14 per cent,
dispensing for that purpose with the usury laws."*

Mr. Pollard's summary, which represents the best modern
scholarship is incorrect in detail and in essence. He shares with
other scholars the fundamental misconception of the importance
of direct taxes, the parliamentary fifteenth and tenth, and sub-
sidy, during the sixteenth century.^ This misconception goes
back to the discussion of the powers of parliament in the early
days of the Long Parliament, when to exalt these powers by a
challenge of precedents, the importance of direct taxes and the
effect of parliamentary control over direct taxation was unduly
magnified. Direct taxes of parliamentary grant were not im-
portant parts of the normal governmental income in the six-
teenth century. As in Lancastrian times they were regarded
as extraordinary revenues granted by parliament only in times of
extraordinary expenditure to help meet the costs of war. Direct
taxes were war taxes, and were not counted upon to meet the
normal costs of government.

The Tudor revenue system had an entirely different basis. In
the last analysis governmental revenue systems are efforts to
turn the chief forms of wealth of the country most efficiently to
the support of the state, with due regard for the prevailing po-
litical idea or theory. Their nature varies with and corresponds,
sometimes tardily, to the changing economic development and
organization of the country. In the Middle Ages, when com-
munication was poor, the country economically disunited, and the
state in general weak, feudal aids and incidents, the profits of
jurisdictions and the farm of the demesne lands of the king by
the sheriffs were the most effective means of diverting the wealth

*A. F. Pollard, "History of England from the accession of Edward VI
to the death of Elizabeth," 186-187.

'A bald statement of the importance of these direct taxes is to be
found in his "England under the Protector Somerset," 48-49. "The or-
dinary royal income was still derived from the ancient taxes, tenths, fif-
teenths and subsidies. There was also the right of purveyance but * ♦ *
the value of this right had been greatly reduced." See also E. Lipson,
"The Economic History of England," 518ff., and W. Cunningham, "Growth
of English Industry and Commerce," 295ff., S47flf.

72 Smith Cou.%Gt Studies in History

of the country, in its form of land, to the support of the govern-
ment. But toward the close of the fifteenth century, communica-
tion improved, money economy had developed rapidly, England
became more economically unified, London became the economic,
as well as the political, capital of most of England. The exten-
sion of the domestic system in the fifteenth century and its na-
tional regulation by the truck act of 1465, the regulation of the
corn trade by the government, the parliamentary recognition of
craft gilds, the protection of native artisans, and the complete
adoption by the Tudors of a mercantilist policy foreshadowed
in the legislation of Richard II, are special phases of the expan-
sion of the economic unit, and the nationalization of the economic
life of the country. This larger unification made possible a more
effective means of turning land — at the outset of the Tudor
period, still the chief form of wealth — to the support of the
state. It was now possible for the crown to manage directly from
London, and to receive in money payments, the rents and issues
of vast estates owned by the crown in the several counties. These
lands and manors owned by the crown, in which the demesnes
were let on leases for money rents, and the peasant holdings were
under the direction of royal bailiffs and stewards, the whole
overseen by crown surveyors controlled directly from London,
became the basis for the Tudor revenue system. The beginnings
of this new system, which supplanted the feudal revenue system,
reach back into the early fifteenth century or before. The duchies
of Lancaster and Cornwall foreshadowed the new; the confisca-
tions of Edward IV were a groping toward it. Richard III
definitely outlined a comprehensive plan for the accumulation
of crown lands; Henry VII, favored by the political circum-
stances attending his accession, immediately put this or a similar
plan into practice. By the great confiscations of the reign; by
renewed insistence on feudal dues, not merely with a view to the
small casual revenue which these yielded, but to establish the
legal claim of the crown to eventual forfeiture or escheat ; by the
resumptions and confiscations of the early part of Henry VIII's
reign, and by the annexation of the monastic lands and estates

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 73

and the first fruits and tenths of the clergy to the crown, the royal
domain had been built up. At the time of Cromwell's fall it was
so great as to provide a revenue free from parliamentary inter-
ference, directly under the control of the king, sufficient, with
the addition of the customs dues and other older revenues to
meet the normal expenditures of the English government.

In his recent brilliant synthesis ©f English history, Mr. G. K.
Chesterton makes the point that the dissolution of the monas-
teries was in fact the robbery of the church by the rich. If Mr.
Chesterton had thought it worth while to acquaint himself inti-
mately with the facts, he would have known that the dissolution
was merely a phase of the policy, continuously followed since
1485, of making landed estates the basis for the crown revenue
system. At its origin the policy had involved an attack upon
the rich, with their humiliation and reduction to poverty and
impotence. The rich of the fifteenth century, the old baronage,
had ceased to exist as powers in the state. The new class, which
Henry VII and Henry VIII called to their aid, included the
highly trained and skilled officials, the unscrupulous intellectuals,
the legistes, like Empson and Dudley, Cromwell, Paget, and
Wriotheseley. Though the ability of such men alone enabled
Henry VIII to break with Rome and carry through the tremend-
ous work of the dissolution, their first rewards were very modest.
As the monastic estates had been confiscated to provide increased
revenue for the crown, it is natural to find that only a very small
portion of them was alienated from the crown before 1540, or
1542, when new circumstances arose.^

The new revenues were not managed or accounted in the
Exchequer, where the medieval tradition and vested rights were
too strong for improvement. New courts were created from
time to time, the Court of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Court
of General Surveyors, the Court of Wards and Liveries, the

" The extent and nature of the early grants of the newly acquired mon-
astic lands to crown favorites is studied at some length in my "Finances of
Henry VII and Henry VIII," (Harvard University Theses, 1916).— F. C.
D.

/

74 Smith College Studies in History

Court of First Fruits and Tenths, and the Court of Augmenta-
tions. Each had its own treasury and accounts, independent of
the others. All their several records must be examined to study
the financial history of the Tudors. They show that the normal
crown income which had been £32,000 from all sources in 1485
was increased to somewhat more than £200,000 a year in 1540.'^
To meet the ordinary expenses of the state, the charges of the
royal household and wardrobe, the salaries of the officials of the
revenue courts, of the officers and ministers of justice and of
the secretaries of the king, the charges of the admiralty, ord-
nance department, armory and mint, the wages of the guards
and yeomen of the crown and chamber and of the soldiers of
the garrisons, £145,000 a year was required in 1540. The sur-
plus income was paid into the king's own coffers. Such are the
figures of the normal income and outgo.

But the ordinary receipts and expenditures of the English
government were the least important part of the national budget
during the last five years of Henry VIIFs reign. In 1542 war
was declared between Scotland and England, and in 1543 betweep
France and England. To the last day of Henry VHI's reign,
the Scotch war had cost £350,263; the French war, for the
siege of Boulogne £586,718, for the keeping of Boulogne £426,-
306, for the extraordinary expenditures at Calais and Guisnes
(besides the charges of the peace establishment there), £276,764,
for the navy £265,024, for the new forts and garrisons in Eng-
land, required against the threat of invasion, £203,205. In all, the
Scotch and French wars had taken £2,108,282 in the last years
of Henry VIII's reign. Part of this money was provided out

'Ordinary income for the average year in the decade 1536-1546: Reve-
nues in the Exchequer, from customs dues and subsidies, and from the old
feudal revenues managed by the sheriffs, £32,000. In the Court of the Gen-
eral Surveyors, from the non-monastic crown lands acquired by Henry VII
jand Henry VHI, £38,000. In the Duchy of Lancaster, £13,000. In the
Wards and Liveries Court, £8,500. In the court of First Fruits and
Tenths, from first fruits and annual tenths, £52,200; from clerical subsi-
dies (each year after 1540), £21,000. In the Court of Augmentations, rents
of monastic lands, £61,300. Total average yearly income £185,000, with
£21,000 additional in each year after 1540 for clerical subsidies.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 75

of the surplus funds which the king had heaped up in his own
coffers since 1535.^ Part was provided by the subsidies, and
fifteenths and tenths granted by parHament.^ The benevolences
and forced loans of 1542, 1543, 1545 and 1546 returned several
'hundred thousand pounds, ^^ while some money was borrowed
of the Fuggers and other bankers in Flanders. But the chief
additions to the royal income during these years came from the
profits of the debasement of the coinage,ii and from the sales of
the monastic lands. Without question the intention of the king
and of Cromwell at the time of the confiscation of the monas-
teries was that they should remain in the crown possession for
the most part, as permanent "endowments" and sources of reve-
nue. But with the war the period of the great alienations of
these newly acquired lands began, not as free grants and gifts to
royal favorites, but by sales at good prices, generally twenty
times the yearly value, to provide money to enable the wars to
be carried on.^^

The debasement of the coinage and the sale of monastic
lands were unsound financial expedients. The alienation of
monastic estates and the reduction of lands in crown possession
seriously reduced not only the immediate revenue from the crown
lands, but their future potentiality, and really began the defeat

* British Museum, Lansdowne Rolls, No. 14, account of Edmund Denny,
keeper of the palace of Westminster from April 22, 1542 to 1548.

'The subsidy granted in 1540, payable in 1541 and 1542, yielded £94,460;
four fifteenths and tenths of 1540 payable in 1541, 1542, 1543 and 1544,
£117,497; the subsidy of 1543, payable in 1544, 1545 and 1546, £183,271; the
first payment of the subsidy, of 1545, payable in 1546, £105,766; the first fif-
teenth and tenth of 1545, payable in 1546, £29,539.

"The forced loan of 1542, £112,229; the "Devotion Money" of 1543,
£1903; the benevolence of 1545, £119,581; the "Contribution" of 1546, no
record.

"The debasement of the coinage profited the crown £363,000 from
May 1, 1544, to the end of Henry VIIFs reign. Record office, Declared
Accounts, Pipe OflJice, 2077.

"Between Michaelmas, 1542, and Michaelmas, 1547, £518,000 was re-
ceived from the sales of monastic lands.

76 Smith Coli.e;gr Studies in History

of Henry VH^s great plan.^^ The debasement of the coinage
aided in enhancing the price of all commodities which the gov-
ernment was buying in great quantities to supply its armies.
Prices were already rising in England before the debasement
began, as a result of the price revolution/^ but the upward
tendency was greatly accelerated by the debasement. The effects
of the price revolution and of the debasement are so inextricably
connected in Edward VFs and Mary's reigns that it does not
seem possible to disentangle them. But the general rise in prices
due to the two causes was serious for the government. Inas-
much as the crown lands were rented on long term leases, it
was not possible for the government to increase its rentals at
once to correspond with the lower value of money. Similarly
for the other revenues. There was a kind of poetic justice in
the situation. The crown cheated the people to get immediate
funds; it had to take back the poor money in payment of its
revenues at its face value; it had to pay at increased rates for
all its supplies; the real value of the revenue expressed in
terms of purchasing power was seriously reduced.

The wars of Henry VHI with France and Scotland had
seriously strained the government's resources when Edward
VI became king of England. Besides the permanent reduction
of the revenue by the great alienations of crown lands, and the
increased expenditures induced by the rise in prices, there was a
debt of £80,000 owing in Flanders ; Boulogne was a heavy burden
on the state; the costs of the upkeep of the fleet, the garrisons,
and the fortifications at Calais, Berwick and other places were
large.^^ But the wars did more. By them the business of the

" In the years between 1540 and 1544, both inclusive, the average rental
of monastic lands alone had been about £44,000. In 1545 it fell to £32,739;
in 1547-48, the first year of Edward VI's reign, the entire rental of all
crown lands, monastic and non-monastic, was only £51,058. R. O., Aug-
mentations Office, Treasurer's Rolls of Accounts, Nos. 1-4.

" The working of the price revolution began to be noticeable in the ex*
penditures of the English government about 1538, when there is a sud-
den upward movement in the expenses of the royal household.

" R. O., Exch. of Rec, Misc. Books, 259, Teller's declarations of issues
in the Exchequer, 1544-1560.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 77

state was so tremendously increased, that even if the king had
not been growing old, it would have been a physical impossibility
for him to guide and direct all its manifold activities himself.
As it was, the state was turned over to the official class, who as
members of the council assumed more and more completely the
management of affairs. Creatures of Henry VIII, as long as he
lived they stood in fear of him, but the accession of a child king
left them in absolute control of the state. They had been re-
warded by Henry VIII, adequately at first, more richly in the
latter years. They were rich, but not yet so rich as they were
to make themselves. It must not be supposed that they crudely
stole government money from the treasury. They solemnly and
in all legal form conveyed to themselves the basic resources of
the state, the crown lands, as fitting rewards of the grateful boy
king to themselves for their toils endured in the onerous business
of government. Before Henry VIII was dead a week Paget
produced a list of promotions and grants intended, as he alleged,
by Henry. From year to year huge blocks of land were thus
voted by the council to themselves and their retainers; through-
out the reign of Edward VI lands to the annual value of i27,000
were thus disposed of as free gifts.^^ These lands, greater in
extent than the land sold during the reign, were permanently
lost to the crown for practically no return at all, and the revenues
reduced. This was all the more serious for the future, for as
rents and values rose these lands would have brought an ever
increasing revenue. Another serious evil was the promiscuous
granting of annuities and pensions and lands for life to royal
favorites. Edward VI's government was following a practice of
Henry VIII's and earlier reigns in this ; many of the pensions and
annuities paid in Edward VI's time had been granted by his

"R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, vol. XIX. In the first
year of the reign gifts were made of lands to the annual value of £5721-
13-8; in the second year £3358-13-9; in the third year £1257-6-2; in the
fourth year £8804-19-10; in the fifth year £3991-10-8; in the sixth year
£3442-13-10; in the seventh year £4099-17-11. Rents to the value of £3619
were reserved.

78 Smith CoIvLEge Studies in History

father. To provide for such payments, more than £32,000 of the
royal revenue was required in 1551. i'''

But the picture of graft and corruption must not be over-
drawn. Certain very important reservations must be kept in
mind. There was no disintegration of the financial system, no
general break-down of all restraints in a universal plunder of
the state. It was only to the masters of the state, the council and
its friends, that robbery was permitted, and then only in legal
form. In its dealings with the governmental agents and officials
who supervised the revenue and expenditures, the council in-
sisted upon a high standard of honesty and exactness. From the
very beginning of the reign of Edward the council devoted a
very considerable amount of its time to a consideration of fi-
nances, as the acts of the privy council show. Careful accounts
of the great treasurers were frequently ordered to be prepared
and laid before the council, or committees of the council were
appointed to investigate the state of the revenues. Individual
members of the council sat as commissioners for the auditing and
passing of the accounts of the very large number of persons who
had royal money in the charge during the wars with Scotland and
France. ^^ These accounts seem to be carefully and accurately
drawn. It is possible of course, that the crown was overcharged,
that goods provided were inferior in quality, or that supplies in-
tended for the government were diverted to private uses. But
charges of this kind brought to the attention of the council are
negligible. ^^ On the other hand there were some notorious cases
of the embezzlement of government funds by important financial
officials. Sir William Sharington, master of the mint at Bristol,

" B. M., Additional MSS., 30198, report on the revenues for the year
1550-1551. Annuities and pensions, £20,000; grants of land for life,
£12,000.

"For orders to the treasurers to lay their accounts before the council,
see "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., Ill, 29, 130, 133, 228, 236, 314; IV, 12,
44, 62, 164, 183. For investigations of the revenue by committees of the
council, see B. M. Add. MSS., 30198; R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Ed-
ward VI., vol. II, Nos. 9, 30, 31. For the audit and passing of accounts by
commissioners see the preambles of the declarations of accounts of this
reign, e. g., R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 43, 17, 14.

""Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., II, 492; III, 127.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 79

one of the Lord Admirars adherents, withheld certain sums
from his books in every month and burnt the originals from
which the indentures had been made up. He did not know
how much he had stolen, but admitted that it was over i4,000.2^
Lord Arundel, the Lord Chamberlain, was charged with pecu-
lation at the time of Somerset's fall, which he confessed, and in
punishment of which he was sentenced to forego his office and
pay a fine of il2,000, "by il,000 by the year."2i jn 1551, Sir
Martin Bowes was contented to give unto his highness by
name of a fine, i 10,000 to be clear of all demands. -2 In the
summer of 1552 some of the most able of Somerset's adher-
ents were brought to book. Whalley, the receiver of the crown
revenues in Yorkshire, confessed that he had lent the king's
money upon gain and lucre, that he had paid one year's reve-
nues with the arrearages of the last and had bought the king's
land with the king's own money.^^ The system of book-keep-
ing in vogue made Whalley's practice easy for a dishonest
man. It seldom happened that all the rents and revenues due
in a district for the year were collected. Yet when the formal
declaration of the account was made, the issues and rents due for
the year were set down in full on the debit side of the account.
On the credit side were entered the payments of money to the
crown's use, including all the actual receipts of the year. What
had not been collected was then entered on the credit side of the
account as "arrearage" for the year, to balance the two sides of
the account. The arrearage of the year was added to the ar-
rearages of past years, which formed an ever-increasing sum,
in which little interest seems to have been taken when the
accountant presented his account in the following year. Some
arrears of rent were paid every year, but inasmuch as the rec-
ords of the details of the arrearages were scattered in many
books, it was easily possible for the accountant to conceal such

""Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports, Hatfield MSS.," I
64-70.

^ "Acts of the privy council," n. s., II, 398.
" "Acts of the privy council," n. s., Ill, 188.
''"Journal of Edward VI," 71.

80 Smith College Studies in History

payments and use them, as Whalley did, for his own purposes.
Similar operations on a far greater scale than Whalley's were
conducted by John Beaumont, receiver-general of the Court of
Wards and Liveries. He concealed in his arrearages receipts of
£9,763 in money, and i 11,822 in obligations, more than i2 1,000
in all. These sums he had lent, or used to purchase the king's
own land from him. He was further guilty of taking bribes as
a judge in chancery.^^ Lord Paget was also found guilty at
this time of great malfeasance in his office of chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, for which he was sentenced to a fine of
£8,000,25 and in the same summer Sir John Williams, treasurer
of the Court of Augmentations, spent some time in the Fleet
prison. From his accounts it appears that he had kept back
£28,445 received in his own time and in the time of his pre-
decessor from the sale of lands. ^^

Punishment for illegal fraud was of the nature of political
vengeance; there is therefore reason to suspect that the number
of offenders included many who never lost favor, and went
unpunished. And yet, when the most has been made of the
corruption of public life in Edward VI's reign, Froude's pic-
ture of "all but universal fraud," of the "infinite" "expenses of
universal peculation" in which "all classes of persons in public
employment were contending with each other in the race for
plunder and extravagance," is much overdrawn. It rests upon
such false assumptions as an increase in the expenditures in the
royal household from £19,000 a year in 1532 to over £100,000
a year in Edward's time; the disappearance of the chantry
lands into private hands "with small advantage to the public
exchequer" ; and upon the hysterical overstatements of the popu-
lar revivalists, Lever and Latimer.^^ Public corruption height-

** "Journal of Edward VI." p. 70. R. O., Court of Wards, Misc.
No. 365 ff., 166-236. This is the account in which the concealment is ad-
mitted.

** "Journal of Edward VI," 71, 86. R. O., State Papers, Domestic.
Edward VI, Vol. XV., No. 58.

"R. O., Augmentations Office, Treasurer's Roll of Accounts, No. 8.

** J. A. Froude, "History of England," V, chapters 26, 27.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 81

ened, but did not cause the serious financial difficulties of the
reign. The frauds were cumulative, for even the effects of the
plunder of the crown estates by the councillors did not show
to the full until the last year of the reign, but the financial diffi-
culties began almost at once. Of these the most obvious ex-
planation is the renewal of the Scotch and French wars, and
their aftermath.

The wars demanded great sums of money, at once available.
During the first five years of the reign of Edward, his govern-
ment was called upon to find a total of il, 356,687 in addition
to the normal governmental expenditures, for war purposes, for
the fleet, the armies in Scotland and France, the garrisons at
home and in Boulogne and Calais, and for new fortifications.^^
There was a marked increase in the wealth and resources of the
nations of Europe in the latter fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
War, absorbing as its just due, the greatest available resources
of the nations, was waged on an increasingly larger and more
expensive scale. The costs and wastes of the wars of England
of the middle period of the sixteenth century, great as they
were, did not bankrupt the English nation, nor stop its devel-
opment and destroy its prosperity. But the situation was quite
different with the government. The idea was not yet current
that all the costs of war should be met by the nation; the
identity of the government and the nation was not yet com-
plete enough for that. It was a crown concern to raise the
necessary funds, to which it was the duty of the nation to con-
tribute in aid of the crown, in the form of fifteenths and tenths
and subsidies. But the forms and machinery of taxation were
rigid and inelastic; and, fashioned in the days of the Planta-
genets^^ and of Henry VIPo to meet the demands of an age
when warfare was cheaper, parliamentary taxes were not ade-
quate contributions in aid. The normal crown revenues were

"R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, XV, No. 11.
"The fifteenth and tenth assumed a fixed form in 1334.
"The subsidy began to assume its form in Henry VII's reign; Henry
VIII had modified it and made it more productive from time to time.

82 Smith College Studies in History

likewise inelastic. Henry VH and Henry VIII had tried to solve
the difficulty of war finance by accumulating large surplus
funds, saved from the annual revenues.^ ^ The first French war
of Henry VIII, 1511-1514, was successfully financed in this
way; the third war with France, 1543-1546, was begun with a
great reserve fund in hand. But so strained had been the re-
sources of the state on Henry VIII's death, and so short the
period of peace that no new surplus could be gathered. The
situation on the renewal of the wear in 1547 was similar to that
in 1522-1525, during the second of Henry VIII's French wars,
when there was likewise no accumulated treasure. At that time
when Wolsey failed to get money by means of loans and subsi-
dies, he had been compelled to advise his king to make peace. But
since that time Henry VIII had discovered means of raising
money quickly by the sale of lands, and the coinage of debased
money. In this way entered into by Henry VIII in his last years,
the Edwardian government followed on to procure the ready
money needed "to go on with."

With the first rumors of a renewal of war with France, and
the beginning of war with Scotland, the confiscation of the ac-
cumulated wealth of the worn-out institutions of the church was
consummated. In 1545 Henry VIII had received the power to
visit and suppress colleges, hospitals, free chapels, chantries and
other corporations of similar nature. Many chantries had been
suppressed during Henry VIII's lifetime. The act lapsed at his
death. In December, 1547, parliament renewed the statute in
favor of Edward VI, resting all the property of colleges and
chantries in the king after the next Easter.32 fj^g council
viewed the grant as made "specially for the relief of the king's
majesty's charges and expenses which do daily grow and in-

^ Henry VII left to his son an accumulated surplus of about £1,000,000,
which Henry VIII spent in the first French war of his reign. In the de-
cade 1530-1540 Henry VIII gathered a second surplus from the excess
revenues of these years, from the heavy fines levied on the clergy for prae-
munire, from the first fruits and tenths, and from the rents and sales of
monastic lands. See above, p. 74.

*" "Statutes," 1 Edward VI, c. 4.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 83

crease by reason of diverse and sundry fortifications, garrisons,
levying of men and soldiers which at this present is so charge-
able and costly that without great help and aid of money his
majesty should not be able to sustain the charges thereof." In
April, 1548, when the approach of war with France made it
necessary that his majesty should "have in readiness all that
should be for defence of his majesty's realm," and the council
noted that "nothing [is] so much lacking as money to maintain
the costs and charges thereof, without the which no defence can
be had," it was decided, since there was at this present "none
other means without great difficulty, danger and grudge to make
such a mass [of money] as might serve for this present neces-
sity," to authorize the sale of chantry lands to the annual value
of £5,000.23 Before the Michaelmas accounts of 1548 were
made up, £110,486 had been received by the commissioners of
the sales, and paid into the treasury of the Augmentations
Court. 3* The sales not only provided the government with
available funds for a time, but assured the support of the war
by the wealthy merchants of London. The government's need
furnished them further opportunity to purchase the land which

""Acts of the privy council," n. s., II, 184-185. Mr. Pollard, in his
"England under the Protector Somerset," page 125, is at some pains to
insist that the commissioners were to sell lands only "to the value of
£5,000, not annual value, but market price for the freehold," that is, they
were to sell a very small amount of land to raise £5,000 for the govern-
ment. The sum of £5,000 was insignificant in comparison with the
government's need ; the wording of the commission in the acts of the privy
council distinctly states "to the sum of five thousand pounds by year,"
and the money received from the sales shows that this much land, nearly
half the total chantry possessions, was at once sold.

"R. O., Augmentations Office, Treasurer's Roll of Accounts, No. 4. In
1549 there was received from the sale of lands £92,695; in 1550, £47,286;
and in 1551, £7856. R. 0., Augmentations Office, Treasurer's Rolls of Ac-
counts, Nos. 5, 6, 7. Sales after 1551 are treated below. The receipt by
the state of these sums effectively replies to Mr. Froude's assertion that
"the chantry lands, which if alienated from religious purposes, should
have been sold for public debts, were disappearing into private hands with
small advantage to the public exchequer." (History of England, Vol. V,
154.) As a rule the state received twenty years' purchase, or twenty
times the annual value, a good price.

84 Smith College Studies in History

was still the safest investment for surplus capital and the neces-
sary basis for social distinction.

As was known "for certain by divers motions in the late
parliament made," the king's loving subjects *'were induced
the rather and franklier to grant" the chantries and other re-
ligious corporations to the king "that they might thereby be
relieved of the continual charge of taxes, contributions, loans
and subsidies the which by reason of wars they were constrained
in the late king of famous memory his majesty's father's reign
to abide."^^ But the freedom from taxation which parlia-
ment had sought to achieve by the transfer of the chantries to
the king was short-lived. The expenditures for war purposes
were so great that a new appeal to parliament was necessary
in 1548. The tax measure which followed was a curious one.
Instead of a direct tax on land, it provided an indirect tax on
sheep and wool to the raising and production of which land
was being more and more devoted. For the inadequate sub-
sidy, it offered a substitute which promised to yield i 106,000
to i 156,000 a year. This estimate was based upon a cal-
culation of the number of sheep in England in Edward IIPs
reign, arrived at from the wool customs of that time,^^ In the
measure is to be seen also something of Somerset's spirit of
agrarian reform, a design to check conversion of arable to
pasture land by indirect taxation. With the new taxes on sheep,
wool, and woolen cloth, were combined some of the older sub-
sidy features of a tax on personalty and a poll tax on certain
aliens.^'' At the same time the clergy made a grant of a «ub-

""Acts of the privy council," n. s., II, 184.

*• R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, II, No. 13. This is a
paper book endorsed "Customs for Wools," addressed to my Lord Protec-
tor's grace. It sets forth the project in several forms. See also ibid., V,
No. 20.

" "Statutes," 2 and 3 Edward VI, c. 36. The tax, known as the Relief,
was taken at the rate of 1 shilling in the pound of the value of personalty
yearly for three years. Aliens were assessed at double rates; those of
them not paying the personalty tax paid a poll tax of 8 pence. For every
ewe sheep kept in pasture was taken 3 pence ; every wether 2 pence ; every
shear sheep on commons IV' pence, or in lots of more than 10, 1 penny
yearly for three years. Each piece of woolen cloth made was taxed 8
pence in the pound of its value.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 85

sidy of six shillings in the pound of the yearly value of all their
livings, payable in three years.^^ The relief was not nearly so
productive as the later subsidies of Henry VIIFs reign. The
first payment, in 1549, brought in slightly less than i54,000;
the second payment, in 1550, only i47,500. But before the
second payment had been collected, Kets' rebellion had broken
out, and Somerset had been deprived of his protectorship. In
the parliament of November, 1549, Somerset's agrarian policy
was reversed; with the repeal of the Tudor agrarian legislation
and the reenactment of the Statute of Merton, there was also
the repeal, on the initiative of the commons themselves, of the
final payment of the tax on sheep, wool, and cloth.^^ As a com-
pensation the subsidy of a shilling in the pound of the value of
goods was extended for another year.'*<* On the whole, but little
aid was got from taxes of parliamentary grant in Edward VPs
reign. Their total yield, including £120,000 granted in Henry
VIII's time and paid in April and June, 1547, was only i299,000.
For the purposes of the wars with Scotland and France the grant
of 1548 was of especially little consequence.

The chief reliance of the government, for its war finances,
was placed upon the mint, and the profits of coining debased
money. In the two first years of the reign, Henry VIIFs
standard of fineness, eight parts of alloy, and four parts of
silver, and his dies, continued to be used. The coins of these
years are identical with those of the last years of Henry VIIFs
reign. In 1549 a change was made. The gold sovereign was
coined 22 carats fine instead of 20; but the new coin was lighter,
containing 170 instead of 192 grains of metal, and only 156
grains of pure gold as opposed to 160 grains in the older coin.
In the silver coins the silver content was raised to six parts.

*• "Statutes," 2 and 3 Edward VI, c. 35.

""Commons Journal," I, 11, On Monday, November 18. 1549, it
was ordered that the speakers and others of the house should be suitors to
know the king's pleasure by his council, if upon their humble suit they
might treat of the last relief for cloths and sheep. On the 20th the king's
pleasure was announced that the house might treat for the act of relief
"having in respect the cause of the granting thereof."

" "Statutes," 3 and 4 Edward VI, c. 23.

86 Smith CoIvLEge Studies in History "

with six parts of alloy; but as the new coins were only two-
thirds the size of the older coins which they replaced, they con-
tained exactly the same number of grains of pure silver.*^ There
was great difficulty in securing bullion due to the prohibition
of the export of bullion from Flanders, where large quantities
were purchased by loans.*^ Yet, with all the difficulties, the
profits of the government were very great. Between the first
'day of Edward's reign, and the first of January, 1551, covering
approximately the war period, £537,000 was realized on the de-
basement of the currency.^3

The confiscation of the chantries, the sale of their lands and
goods, the new taxes, and the debasement of the currency pro-
vided notable sums, but not enough to meet the war bills.
Further shift was made by using funds intended for normal
charges, so that at the end of the war the various governmental
departments were deeply in debt.^^ Finally heavy loans were
made in Flanders, of the Fuggers, the Tuchers, the Sheetz and
other bankers in Antwerp. At times to repay one loan another
was made; or the original loan was extended on disadvantag-
eous terms, generally involving the purchase of fustians, jew-
els or other goods by the king."*^ In this device of foreign loans,

" C. W. C. Oman, "The Tudors and the Currency."

" R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, VIII, No. 38.

*'R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2077, Declaration of the ac-
count of Sir Edmund Pekham, high treasurer of the mints, to January 1,
1551.

"B. M., Lansdowne MSS., II, f. 125. A paper noted in Cecil's hand,
drawn up before November, 1552. The Household owed £28,000; the
Chamber i20,000; the Wardrobe £8333; the Stables £1000; the Admiralty
£5000; the Ordnance £3134; the Surveyor of the Works £3200; the Treas-
urer of Calais £15,000; the Treasurer of Berwick £6000; the Master of the
Revels £1,000; the Treasurer of Ireland £13,128, and the paymasters at
Scilly, Alderney, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, £2,000.

*' One bargain made March 23, 1551, between the council and Christo-
fer Haunsell for and in the name of Anthony Fugger and his nephews pro-
vides: For the sale of one jewel containing four rubies marvellous big, as
the boy king described it in his Journal, one orient, and one great dia-
mond and one great pearl for £33,333-6^. -8d. Flemish to be paid in Ant-
werp without interest in eleven months. For the sale of twelve thou-
sand marks weight of fine silver bullion at 50^. 475d. the mark, to be de-
livered at Antwerp by the last of August next. A clause protects the Fug-

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 87

as in all others, the Edwardian councillors were simply follow-
ing, and perhaps bettering the examples of Henry VIII. They
paid the same interest, 14 per cent, they renewed and prolonged
as he had done. But their operations were on a larger scale and
they created a heavier incubus of debt to burden the post-war
period.

gers in case of lawful impediment to the delivery. For the sale to the
king of so many bales of fustians as shall amount to £14,000 Flemish, to
be paid in Antwerp without interest April 30, 1552. All fustians will be
sold in England and not conveyed beyond sea again. Provision is also
made that where the king owes Erasmus Sheetz and Sons £42,090 Flemish,
payable May IS, 1551, the Fugger shall pay the Sheetz this sum of £42,090,
and the king shall repay one year later, with interest at 8 per cent. Finally
where the king owes the Fuggers £38,976 Flemish, payable August 15,
1551, the sum is respited for a year at 12 per cent. R. O., Treasury of
Receipt, Letters Patent, Bundle 4, No. 15/37. A letter of the council dated
April 9, 1550, to Damosell agent in Flanders urges him to do the best he
can for prolongation of a debt due in May, 1550, for a year longer. He
is to accept an offer to prolong, purchasing 2400 kintalls of powder at
50s. a kintall, to be paid at the end of the year also. "Acts of the privy
council," n. s., II, 426. In his Journal Edward notes, "debt of
30,0001. and odd money put over for a year, and there was bought 2500
quintals of powder." Journal, 18.

Other loans abroad during the war were, 13 October, 1547, of Anthony
Fugger, 129,650 florins to be repaid March 31, 1548; April, 1548, of Lazarus
Tucker 167,218 florins; 11 September, 1549, of Anthony Fugger 328,800
florins to be repaid August 15, 1550; 5 May, 1550, of Erasmus Sheetz,
107,520 florins to be repaid May 15, 1551. R. O., Treasury of Receipt.
Letters Patent, Bundle 4 ; State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, IV, No. 5.

CHAPTER II
Northumberland's Failure, 1550-1553

Peace was made betv^een France and England in 1550.
Among the terms of the treaty was a provision for the restora-
tion of Boulogne, of which the capture, fortification, and keep-
ing had cost the English state i 1,342,550 in five and one-half
years. Its surrender for nothing would have been a great
financial relief to the English government; Henry II of France
generously paid 400,000 crowns (il33,333) for its recovery.
For months after the peace was signed the garrisons at Calais
and in the north were continued at their full war strength, be-
cause "these wanted money to dispatch them," that is pay them
their arrears of wages and discharge them. Although there
seems to have been an intention of keeping the 400,000 crowns
as ready money available in emergencies — the first payment was
ordered laid up in the Tower "for all purposes" — it was at last
necessary to order payments to be made from it to discharge
the soldiers, and meet other charges.^ Despite the discharge
of the soldiers from Calais and in the north, there remained a
large war establishment, which could not be, or was not at
once, disbanded. At Calais the ordinary garrison had long
cost £5,000 a year more than the rents of the town and the
wool customs collected by the merchants of the Staple, while the
cost of work on the fortifications and the wages of the extra-

*"Acts of the privy council," n. s., Ill, 93. Of the first (half) payment
£10,000 were sent to Calais; £9500 to Ireland; £15,166 to the north; £2000
were assigned to the ordnance department; £1000 to Alderney, and £1000
to the Admiralty. Of the second payment of 200,000 crowns, £8000 were
at once to Calais; £5000 to the north and £10,000 "was appointed to be
occupied to win money to pay the next year, pay the outward pays ; and it
was promised that the money should double every month." Journal of
Edward VI, 26. The scheme by which the money thus invested was
to double every month is described by Froude, "History of England," V,
265.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 89

ordinary crew continued at over £19,000 a year in addition.^
There were heavy charges for works and garrisons at Berwick,
and on the Scotch marches, and in the various block houses or
forts on the EngHsh coast ;3 there were the charges of the ad-
miralty and ordnance offices, and the expenditures in Ireland
above the Irish revenues. The Irish revenues, after the costs
of the civil government there had been paid were about i4,700
sterling a year. During the first years of Edward's reign the
island had been aflame with insurrection; large sums had to be
sent to Ireland for military purposes which the Irish revenues
did not meet. In 1550, however, it was resolved that Ireland
should no longer be a drain on the English treasury; the situa-
tion was to be reversed, and Ireland was to contribute to the
royal resources. To carry out the new policy, Anthony St.
Leger returned as deputy.^ He was as little successful in mak-
ing Ireland "pay" as Henry VIII had been in a similar scheme;
the charges of the necessary military establishment increased by
leaps and bounds. Whereas in 1547 the charges of Ireland were
il5,500, in 1551 and 1552 they rose to £42,000 and more. The
Irish revenue did not increase; the deficit had to be made good
from London.^

Not directly due to the war, but certainly induced in part by
causes connected with the war were the serious increases in
the costs of the royal household. In the first years of the reign
the household had required about the same amount of money
as in the last years of Henry VIIFs reign, about £38,000 a
year. In 1550, and 1551 the expenditures increased to £50,000

"B. M., Additional MSS. No. 30,198, a statement of the revenues for the
year 1550-1551; R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2079, account
of Sir Edward Pekham. In the year February, 1551, to March, 1552, Pek-
ham paid out £25,500 for Calais causes.

'These required £9733-17-7 for the year 1550-'51. B. M., Additional
MSB., No. 30,198.

* Froude, "History of England," V, 392.

'B. M., Additional MSS., No. 4767, f. 99; f. 160. The yearly charge in
Ireland is given in the latter paper :—ao. 1, Edward VI, £15,958; ao. 2,
£21,024; ao. 3, £27,113; ao. 4, £20,566; ao. 5, £42,968; ao. 6, ^42,609. All
sums are in sterling money.

90 Smith Coi.i.e:ge Studies in History

and i56,000.^ This was in part due to increased luxury at the
court, in part in all probability to peculation by officials, but in
greatest part to the rise in prices. A similar increase, on a much
smaller scale, is to be noted in the wardrobe expenditures. And
while the government was endeavoring to meet all these great
payments and increases, in addition to the normal state expend-
itures, it was constantly reminded of the unpaid debts in the
household, wardrobe and chamber, and of the great loans raised
abroad at 14 per cent interest, which somehow had to be paid.
Governmental finances were studied by the council between
1550 and 1553 with a zeal which shows how clearly the serious-
ness of the problem was realized. One investigation, carried
out by Thomas Lord Darcy, Lord Chamberlain, Thomas, Bishop
of Norwich, Sir Richard Cotton, Controller of the Household,
Sir John Gates, Vice-Chamberlain, Sir Robert Bowes, Master
of the Rolls, and Sir Walter Mildmay, one of the General Sur-
veyors of the Court of Augmentations, for the year Michael-
mas, 1550, to Michaelmas, 1551, showed that the clear normal
income from all sources, deducting fixed charges, grants and
annuities, was i 168, 150. The fees of the royal officials,
ministers, and servants, the ordinary household and wardrobe
assignments, "^ the expenses of the audit courts, the charges for
decays and reparations, and the charges for certain garrisons,
that is to say, the normal government payments, were il31,600.
There was available thus a balance of £36,550. From this sum

'R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 1795. Household expenditures
for the year :

1547-48, £38,804- 6;r.-6d.

1548-49, £41,359- 3.y.-4d.

1549-50, i50,778-16j.-4d.

1550-51, £56,806-13.y.-8d.

1551-52, i55,791-15j.-9d.

1552-53, i51,903-10.y.-2d.
The increase is not however nearly so great as has been alleged.

'From time to time each court was ordered to set aside and pay regu-
larly a certain sum for the household. These sums, amounting in all to
£41,864 in 1551-2 were the household assignment. The expenditures in the
household exceeded the assignment in every year in Edward's reign. See
above.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 91

the committee reported, there had to be met the charges of the
admiralty, of the ordnance, of the king's privy purse, the New
Year's gifts, the charges at Calais and in Ireland above the
revenues there, and the extra charges in the household above the
assignment. The various military establishments alone — Calais,
Ireland, the navy, the north and Berwick, the ordnance and so
forth — took more than £112,000 from February, 1551, to
Michaelmas, 1552, or at the rate of i80,000 a year.s The extra
charges in the household in the year 1551 were i 15,000 more
than the assignment. Even with the addition of the subsidy of
£43,260 paid in April, 1551, there was not enough money available
from the revenues to meet the current charges. Then some way
must be found to pay off the war debts of £250,000 owing in Eng-
land and Flanders.^ It was further deemed desirable to "get
£50,000 of treasure money for all events," that is, accumulate a
new surplus,!^ and finally money had to be found for the new
standing army, the bands of horsemen attached to Northumber-
land's most devoted partisans, organized in December, 1551.^^
In the expedients which were used to remedy this alarming
deficiency, resort was had to all the old devices, betraying a
sterility of ideas and a failure to grasp the cause of the situation.
Solemnly the council determined upon a policy of retrenchment.
The garrisons at little blockhouses like Portland and Pendivis
were reduced from two to four men each, and several small
forts were discontinued,^^ ^jth a saving of £583-12.y.-6d. a year.^*

'R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2079; account of Sir Edmund
Pekham, high treasurer of the mints.

'The amount of the debt is variously stated. An entry in Edward's
Journal (p. 66) puts the sum at £251,000 at the least in May, 1552; a paper
of Cecil's, before November, 1552, puts it at £241,179, B. M., Lansdowne
MSS. II, f. 125; another paper of 1552 gives it at £235,700 and still
another at £219,686, R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XV,
No. 13, No. 14. At least £132,372 was due to the money lenders in Flan-
ders, and £108,800 owed in England.

" Literary Remains of Edward VI, II, 543, note in the king's own hand.

"'Acts of the privy council," n. s.. Ill, 399; IV, 4, IS, 132.

"R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, XIII, Nos. 10, 11, 12,
'Acts of the privy council," n. s., IV, 130.

"'Acts of the privy council," n. s., IV, 139.

92 Smith ColIvEge Studies in History

The tables of the ''young lords" and others in the household were
discontinued, auditorships were abolished to save fees, and
workmen discharged.^* As early as 1551 attention was directed
to the superfluous charges of the large number of revenue courts,
with too many officers and too little business. ^^ They escaped
pruning for the moment because an office in a revenue court
was a vested interest, a property right, which could be abolished
by the state only in return for the compensation of a life pen-
sion.^^ In the spring of 1552 the reduction of the fleet was
ordered, and it was even suggested that some of the king's old
ships be let for rent, and hulks of no more value be sold.^'''
There was, however, no mention of retrenchment or restriction
in the plunder of the crown by the council in the form of grants
of land to the councillors themselves, though it is true that the
grants of the fifth, sixth and seventh years did not equal in
extent those of the fourth year of the reign.

In all the revenue courts there were great arrears of overdue
rents and revenues owing to the crown through many years.
"My debts owing me" after this sort were estimated by Edward
to be ilOOjOOO.i^ In times of stringency in the middle period
of Henry VIII's reign it was a much used practice "to call in
the debts." So at this time. In February of 1551, the treasurer
and chancellor of the Augmentations were commanded to bring
in with all diligence a book of all such debts and arrearages as
are due to the king's majesty in that court, and it may be that
similar commands were sent to the other treasurers. ^^ Late

""Journal of Edward VI," 79; "Acts of the privy council," n. s..
Ill, 316, IV, 102, 115, 160, 260. See also "Journal of Edward VI," 65,
83 for retrenchment in the mint and Ireland.

^"Literary Remains of Edward VI," Vol. II, 500, 543.

"When the Court of General Surveyors was amalgamated with the
Court of Augmentations, January 1, 1547, the officials of the older court
for whom no place could be found were given pensions or annuities of
more than £3000 a year. See Appendix, Disbursements of the Court of
Augmentations.

""Acts of the privy council," n. s., IV, 46. R. O., State Papers, Do-
mestic, Edward VI, XIII, Nos. 10, 11, 12.

""Literary Remains," II, 550.
""Acts of the privy council," n. s., Ill, 228.

Finances oi^ Edward VI and Mary 93

in the same year and in 1552 commissioners were appointed to
call in the debts. ^^ They succeeded in collecting il6,667 before
Michaelmas, 1552.21 Something, too, was expected from the
familiar device of Empson and Dudley. For in March, 1552, a
committee of the council was appointed to examine the penal
laws and put certain of them into execution.22 It seems to have
been decided to enforce those touching horses and plows, riots,
the planting and grafting of trees, the cutting of wood and
billets and forestalling and regrating.^^ The sale of the king's
gunpowder, fustians, and copper, which he had been compelled
to take as "fee penny" for the prolongation of the Flanders
loans, and the sale of "certain jewels," bell-metal and lead, part of
the past spoil of the church, were tried. 2"* Next, the completion
of the confiscation of the church plate, and the sale of church
goods and ornaments was ordered and carried through. In
1549 commissioners had taken inventories of ornaments, plate,
jewels, bells, and vestments in all churches, forbidding the sale
or embezzlement of any part of them.^^ On February 26, 1551,
it was decreed in the council that "forasmuch as the king's
majesty had need presently of a mass of money, therefore com-
missions should be addressed into all shires of England to take
into the king's hands such church plate as remaineth to be em-
ployed unto his highness' use." The first commissioners for
the plate and goods were sent out in the spring of 1552 ;26 they

^"Journal of Edward VI," 56, 58; "Literary Remains," II, 500.

"R. O., Augmentations Office, Treasurer's Roll of Accounts, No. 10.
All debts were ordered paid to Peter Osborne, who was to act as a special
treasurer, keeping the money to the king's use.

''"Journal of Edward VI," 62.

^"Literary Remains," II, 543. Memorandum in the king's own hand,
entitled, "Matters for the council, October 3, 1552. How a mass of money
may be gotten to discharge the sum of i300,000 both for discharge of the
debts, and also to get £50,000 of treasure money for all events."

^ "Acts of the privy council," n. s., IV, 108 ; "Literary Remains," II, 543.
£49,113 was received from the sale of such goods, 1552-1553; R. O., Aug-
mentations Office, Treasurer's Roll of Accounts No. 8.

"" R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, VI, No. 25.
"•"Acts of the privy council, n. s.. Ill, 228, 233, 467, 536! Journal of
Edward VI, 65.

94 Smith Coli^Egk Studie:s in History

were followed by others, who, still busy in the spring of 1553^
were urged by the council to greater speed. ^''^ From "church
plate superfluous," being coined, it was estimated that £20,0CX>
would be realized and from the sale of church goods £10,772
was received.28 Other developments however returned some
of the plate to the churches in Mary's reign. Finally, in their
quest for money, the council turned to the mint.

For many years the mint had been the great "sheet-anchor"
of the government in times of storm and stress. The evils of
the debasement of the coinage, the exportation of all the good
money, especially the gold of the country, and the adverse for-
eign exchange, together with the effect of the debasement on
prices, were clearly recognized by writers, merchants, and the
popular preachers.2^ Even the council was convinced of the
necessity of restoring the standard of fineness of the coins. The
first necessary step in doing this, as Lane, the London merchant,
had pointed out to Cecil, was the "calling down" of the value
of the testoun, groat and penny to their intrinsic silver-content
value. This was first considered in the council in April, 155L
But fatuously enough, it was decided that there should be one
last orgy of debasement before the proclamations for calling
down were issued, "to get gains of il60,000 clear by which the
debt of the realm might be paid, the country defended from any
sudden attempt, and the coin amended/' And so, "for the dis-

"" Ibid., IV, 219, 265, 270. For volumes of the reports of the
commissioners detailing their activities, and sometimes excusing them-
selves for not being able to do more for the king's advantage and other
interesting comments, see B. M., Stowe MSS., Vols. 147, 827. The bulk
of the reports is in the Record office; those of certain counties have been
published. The best general account is in Dixon, "History of the
Church of England," III, 448ff.

^"Literary Remains," II, 550, Edward's memorandum. R. O., Staie
Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, XV, No. 42, a paper by Cecil. R. 0., De-
clared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2080.

^B. M., Cotton MSS. Vespasian D. 18, papers of William Thomas,
clerk of the council. R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, XIII,
No. 3, a letter of William Lane, merchant of London, to William Cecil,
January 18, 1551. The letter is printed by Froude, "History of England,"
V, 266. Latimer, "Sermons," (Parker Society), 68, 95, 136, 137. John
Hales, "A Discourse of the Commonweal of this realm of England,"
(Edition of 1893), 104.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 95

charge of debts and to get some treasure to be able to alter all,"
that is meet the expenses of altering and bettering the standard,
twenty thousand pounds weight of bullion was ordered to be coin-
ed three ounces of silver and nine ounces of alloy.^^ But before
two months were out, the misgivings of the council were such
that it was decided not to proceed after £80,000 of money of
the standard of three ounces fine together with ten thousand
marks weight of four ounces fine had been coined. But be-
cause of the changes in the fortifications at Calais and Berwick,
it was agreed three weeks later to issue another i40,000 of a
standard of three ounces fine while five thousand pounds weight
of silver should be coined seven ounces fine at the least.^^ Thus
the council vacillated between regard for the opinion of the
people, and need for money. In July the mints were ordered
to stop coining ;32 ^ot however until i 114,500 had been taken
from the people of England in the profits of the recent debase-
ment.33 In September, 1551, the council directed the mints to
begin the coinage of good money of the standard of eleven
ounces and one pennyweight of silver and nineteen penny-
weights of alloy. A month later when the new coinage was
actually being issued, the council ordered the lord chancellor "to
haste forth the proclamation of the coin for the satisfaction of
the people." This last clause probably carries the explanation
of why the council did not dare to issue any more debased
money, although in the spring of 1552 the project was recon-
sidered.^*

From all these sources large sums were received, but prac-
tically everything that came in from them was used for cur-

~ "Journal of Edward VI," 33, April 10, 1551.

''Ibid., 35, May 30; 37, June 18, 1551.

""Acts of the privy council," n. s., Ill, 316. July 17, 1551.

"R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2079, account of Sir Edmund
Pekham, high treasurer of the mint.

'* R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XIII, No. 47, direc-
tions for the new standard, Sept. 25, 1551. Between October and Decem-
ber, 1551, 6543 pounds weight of silver worth more than i21,000 were
coined— R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2079. See also "Acts of
the privy council," n. s., Ill, 400; IV, 57, 102.

96 Smith Cou^tct Studies in History

rent charges in Ireland, at Berwick and Calais, and for the
fleet and ordnance. But little was available for the payment
of the bonds held in Flanders by the Fuggers and the Sheetz.
In April, 1551, the Fuggers renewed a bond for £60,000 at ten
per cent, provided that the king purchase bullion and jewels.^s
When the time for the payment of the extended loan came.
Sir Philip Hobbey took i53,500 Flemish in French crowns over
sea with him — probably the last remaining portion of the Bou-
logne ransom money, — but had to borrow £10,000 Flemish of
Lazarus Tucker at seven per cent for six months to make up
the pay. At the end of April, 1552, il4,000 additional was
due the Fuggers, which was paid possibly by a new loan.^^ In
May a debt of i6,180 Flemish due Jasper Sheetz was paid out
of the money that came of the king's old debts. 3''' But regard-
ing another bond of £45,000 due to the Fuggers in May, 1552,
"a letter was sent to the Foulcare," writes the king in his journal,
''that I have paid £63,000 Flemish in February, and £14,000 in
April, which came to £77,000 Flemish, which was a fair sum of
money to be paid in one year, chiefly in this busy world,
whereas it is most necessary to be had for princes. Besides this,
that it was thought money should not now do him so much
pleasure as at another time peradventure. Upon these consid-
erations they had advised me to pay but £5,000 of the £45,500
I now owe and so put over the rest according to the old interest
14 per cent with which I desired him to take patience.''^^ In
August a bond for £56,000 fell due. Gresham, the govern-
ment agent in Flanders, had no money to meet the payment ; he
secured an agreement for prolongation on the usual terms that
the government purchase certain fustians and diamonds of the
lenders. The council in Northumberland's absence refused the
conditions. The king, Gresham was informed, would pay as
soon as he could : until he did so the bankers must wait. Gres-

^ See above, p. 86 note. See also, "Journal of Edward VI," 33.
''Ibid., 60, 62, 63, 65, 66. "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., IV, 27.
""Journal of Edward VI," 68. "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s.,
IV, 58.

"" "Journal of Edward VI," 66.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 97

ham insisted that the loan must not be defaulted, or the country
would be brought to shame.

In the early summer months of 1552 the council register
shows that the treasuries were often actually empty; in August
payments by the government were actually suspended, "for that
his highness is presently in Progress and resolved not to be
troubled with payments until his return. "^^ The acme of the
crisis had come. It brought with it the failure of Northumber-
land's plan to seize the government. For at Michaelmas, 1552,
the gens d'armes, the mercenary army which Northumberland
had gathered in December, 1551, had to be disbanded for lack
of money. Against money and metal, the weight of guns and
mercenaries, Mary and her followers could not have raised up
their heads. But without money, and hence without the mer-
cenary soldiers, Northumberland had no chance against the
divinity that doth hedge about a king, and the magic of the
Tudor name. With the discharge of the mercenaries North-
umberland disarmed himself, and all possibilities of his success
were gone.

In the summer of 1552 Northumberland probably expected a
longer reprieve than he was to have before the test. The gov-
ernment was bankrupt, but if there was time enough all might
still be mended. Rather bravely Northumberland attempted to
retrieve the situation by the use of heroic measures. The man-
agement of the finances he turned over to William Cecil, who in
later years was to become the greatest master of governmental
finances of the sixteenth century.^^ The mayor and aldermen
of the City of London endorsed new loans in Flanders;*^ the
merchants of the Staple and the Merchant Adventurers advanced

" "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., IV, 109, August 8, 1552.
**A note book of June and July, 1552, in Cecil's hand (R. O., State
Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, XIV, No. 53), shows him very much
interested in all government business, especially disbursements of money.
In the following months there are many memoranda from his hand, show-
ing the debts, with fruitful suggestions for amending the situation. R. O.,
State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XV, Nos. 13, 17, 42.

*' "Acts of the Privy Council," n, s., IV, 29, 129, April and September,
1552.

9S Smith Coi.i.i:ge Studies in History

money to the government to meet its obligations, and took over
the payment of loans as they fell due.^^ jn these days, too,
the accounts of Northumberland's political opponents who had
held important financial offices were investigated, and Beau-
mont, Whalley, and Paget compelled to disgorge great sums.
Northumberland contemplated going much further in these in-
vestigations, to discover whether the crown had been justly an-
swered of the plate, lead, and iron that belonged to the abbeys,
the profit of alum, copper, and fustians appoined to be sold,
and such land as Henry VHI had sold. He was minded to exam-
ine the accounts of the treasurers and receivers of the various
revenue courts, and finally "to call on every one who had received
money in behalf of the crown since the year 1532 to produce
his books and submit them to an audit."^^

The sale of crown lands, which had almost ceased since the
making of peace with France, possibly out of the realization
that sales and gifts could not proceed concurrently without
ultimate disaster, was renewed on a larger scale than ever before
in the reign. In May, July, and October new commissions of
sales were issued for the sale of chantry and other crown estates,
together with rectories, parsonages, advowsons and other spirit-

"In July the merchants of the Staple were desired by the council
to advance by way of prest or loan some good portion of money besides
the sums as should be due for the wool custom at this shipping. In October,
in anticipation of the "pay" of £48,000 to be made in December "beyond
seas," the Merchant Adventurers agreed to lend the king i40,000 repay-
able in March, 1553. The sum was assessed by the merchants upon them-
selves at the rate of 20.?. for each cloth exported. It was estimated that
at this shipping they would carry 40,000 broad cloths. The grant was
confirmed by a "company" assembled of 300 Merchant Adventurers, Oc-
tober 4, 1552. A month later the Staplers agreed to take over a loan of
£21,000 due to the Fuggers on February 15, 1553, paying £10,000 before the
day, and the balance "on prorogation" — "for which they must pay the
interest." In the spring of 1553 the Staplers and the Adventurers as-
sumed responsibility for the payment of £43,771 due to the Fuggers, the
Sheetz, the Rellingers and Francis van Hall. "Journal of Edward VI,"
80; "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., IV, 169, 267. Repayment was
made to the merchants out of money from the land sales.

** "Journal of Edward VI," 84. Froude, "History of England," V, 425.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 99

ualities.** Sir Edmund Pekham was appointed special treas-
urer to receive the money coming of the sales. In the year from
Michaelmas, 1552, to Michaelmas, 1553, he received £153,479
in purchase money, while £16,623 was paid into the Court of
Augmentations.*^

These ways and means proving less effective than had been
expected, the council began, in December, 1552, to plan for a
parliamentary grant. Northumberland approved the action,
"necessarily considering that there is none other remedy to
bring his majesty out of the great debts wherein for one great
part he was left by his highness father . . . , and aug-
mented by the wilful government of the late Duke of Somerset,
who took upon him the Protectorship and government of his
own authority. His highness, by the prudence of his father,
left in peace with all princes, suddenly, by that man's unskillful
protectorship and less expert in government was plunged into
wars whereby his majesty's charges was suddenly increased
unto the point of six or seven score thousand pounds a year over
and above the charges for the keeping of Boulogne. . . .
These things being now so onerous and weighty to the king's
majesty, and having all this while been put off by the best means
We have been able to devise, although but slender shifts in com-
parison, the same is grown to such an extremity as without it
speedily be helpen by your (the council's) wise heads both dis-
honour and peril may likely follow. And seeing there is none
other honorable means to reduce these evils grown by the oc-
casion afore rehearsed, I think there be no man that beareth his
obedient duty to his sovereign lord and country but must of con-
sequence conform himself to think this way (of a subsidy)
most honorable ; for the sale of lands you have proved, the seek-
ing of every man's doings in office you mind to try, and yet
you perceive all this cannot help to salve the sore." In the last

**"Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., IV, 46, 143; B. M., Additional
MSS., 5498, f.39; "Journal of Edward VI," 66.

^'R. 0., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 2080; Augmentations Office,
Treasurer's Roll of Accounts, No. 8.

100 Smith Coi^lege Studies in History

sentence of the letter Northumberland refers to the "danger of
murmuring or grudging that you (the council) mind to avoid."*^
The difficulty of the situation which made the council fear
"murmuring and grudging" was that it was designed to ask a
tax, which was preeminently a war measure, in a time of peace.
The cloak of loyalty and patriotism could not be used to quiet
opposition. The interests of the crown and the people, the unity
of which was the foundation of the Tudor commonwealth, were
not identical here and embarrassing questions might be asked con-
cerning the new-gotten wealth of the chief ministers. One
of the council busied himself with a book of "arguments and
collections," apparently refuting all possible arguments against
the new taxes, especially arguments based on references to the
gifts of land by the council to themselves. Northumberland
did not understand the new spirit of inquiry and liberalism
which was in the air. He returned the book with part of his
simple mind scribbled upon the margin. "There is no need to
be so ceremonious as to imagine the objects of every forward
person, but rather to burden their minds and hearts with the
king's extreme debts and necessity grown and risen by such oc-
casions and means as cannot be denied by no man, and that we
need not to seem to make a count to the commons of his ma-
jesty's liberality and bounti fulness in augmenting or advancing
of his nobles or of his benevolence showed to any his good ser-
vants lest you might thereby make them wanton and give them
occasion to take hold of your own arguments. But as it shall
become no subject to argue the matter sofar, so if any should be
so far out of reason, the matter will always answer itself with
honor and reason to their confuting and shame."*"^ The grant
demanded was the usual subsidy and two fifteenths and tenths;
there was nothing "vast" about it. Yet such was the public
temper, that even in the parliament of 1553, rather an assembly
of notables than a representative body, the measure was de-

^'R. O., State Paper, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XV, No. U, De-
cember 28, 1552.

" R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Vol. XVIII, No. 6, Janu-
ary 14, 1553.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 101

bated; the commons' journal notes ''arguments" on two days,
and a "consultation in the Star Chamber."^* Some further indi-
cation of the unpopularity of the tax may be gleaned from the
rejoicing with which Mary's remission of the subsidy as one of
her first acts was greeted. "There was a marvellous noise of
rejoicing and giving the queen thanks in Chepeside by the peo-
ple for the same."^^ That the people of England in parliament
gained control of the government by virtue of parliamentary
control of taxation is often stated. But it must not be over-
looked that control of the government by the people was pos-
sible of accomplishment only as the people recognized the gov-
ernment as belonging to them, and were willing to assume the
burdens of the finances of the state. This was not yet true in
the sixteenth century.

There was for Northumberland one salvation, not fifteenths
and tenths and subsidies, but the last remaining endowments of
the church, the bishops' estates. The last possible phase of
the policy begun by Cromwell had in fact already been entered.
In 1550 the newly founded bishopric of Westminster was dis-
solved and united to the see of London, which was forced to
neutralize any advantages of the union by the surrender of
various manors to the crown. In 1551, Ponet on his translation
to Winchester alienated the whole of the patrimony of the see
to the crown for a fixed stipend of two thousand marks. In
1552 the see of Gloucester was dissolved, its estates annexed to
the crown and its diocese to that of Worcester. True, the crown
had profited little: most of the land acquired from bishops'
estates had been at once regranted to courtiers. The great at-
tack was begun in the parliament of 1553. A bill was passed
for the division of the great diocese of Durham, with the spolia-
tion of its lands for the benefit of the crown and Northumber-

** "Commons' Journal," I, March 6-11, 1553. The clergy also made a
grant of six shillings in the pound of the value of their livings, payable
in three years. "Statutes," 7 Edward VI, c. 12, 13.

" "The Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary,"
Camden Society Publications, V, 48.

102 Smith Coi.IvE:ge; Studies in History

land.^^ But before the Revolution could recoup itself by fur-
ther development in the way of the Henrician and Cromwell-
ian tradition of the increase of the crown estates at the expense
of the church, and rearm itself against the reaction, the boy
king died. His death came a little too soon for the success of
Northumberland's plans.

Dixon, "History of the Church of England," III, 197-8, 274, 471, 511.

CHAPTER III
RiScoNSTRUCTioN Under Mary, 1553-1558

"Sterility," writes Pollard, "was the conclusive note of
Mary's reign." It was a "palpable failure." Yet one exception
must be taken to Mr. Pollard's sweeping condemnation. In the
matter of government finances there was a real and important
advance, without which the work of Elizabeth could not have
begun so auspiciously. Like a spendthrift wasting his capital
funds the late Henrician and the Edwardian government had
reduced and alienated crown possessions and resources to tide
over financial crises. What was left was now so carefully hus-
banded that it was made to serve the requirements of the state
for another half century. This was the constructive work of
Mary's government. The religious reaction which Mary per-
sonified made it impossible to go forward to those new develop-
ments of the Tudor policy which Northumberland was planning,
and had already begun, the increase of the crown lands by the
annexation of the estates of the bishops. The queen's intense
devotion to the old church even led to the surrender of certain
resources already in hand. But the sale of lands practically
ceased, and for the sources of supply which remained, conserva-
tion and intensive cultivation to effect the utmost productivity
were the keynotes.

Mary enjoyed initial advantages which her brother did not
have when he began to rule. The kingdom was at peace, and
not threatened with war. Boulogne with its great charges had
fortunately been lost. The crown was not surrounded by a
group of grasping councillors bent on enriching themselves at
the expense of the state. At the beginning of the reign stern
retrenchment was the order. "It must also be considered," runs
a memorandum of things to be done for the good of the reigpti,
drawn up August 4, 1553, "that the expenses of the queen
be so moderated as the crown be able to bear it and have where-
with also to resist the enemy. And for this cause, all such

/

104 Smith College Studies in History

superfluous new charges as have of late crept in are to be taken
away and the state of the household, the admiralty, ordnance,
mint, Ireland, Calais, Berwick and other places reduced near
the same charges that they were in the latter end of King
Henry VHI/'^ The reduction of the extraordinary numbers in
the armies and garrisons in Ireland, at Calais and Berwick and
the various forts in England was recommended and carried out.
Shortly after, a special committee of the council was appointed
to take general oversight of the advances for Calais, Berwick
and Ireland, the North, Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight and "the
Islands."^ in Ireland alone, the yearly charge which had been
i42,609 in the last year of Edward's reign was reduced to
il7,796 in the third year of Queen Mary.^ It was recommended
too that the charges in the household be reduced, after a study
of the charges of the latter part of Henry VIII's reign with
"reasonable additions thereto." But a great reduction in the
household charges was not effected. During the two first years
of the reign they were greater than they had been in Edward
VFs time, though after that they were considerably reduced.*
The expenses of the wardrobe continued very large, but were
declared by a committee of the council to be satisfactory and
not excessive.^

^R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, I, No. 5.
'R. O., ''State Papers, Domestic," Mary, I, No. 3; III, No. 31.
*B. M., Additional MSS., 4767, f. 160. Yearly charges, ao. 1 Mary
£37,916; ao. 2 Mary £38,524; ao. 3 Mary £17,796. The charges rose slightly
later, to £20,375 for the army and £1,735 for fees and annuities in 1559.
Additional MSS. 4767, ff. 116, 126, 129.

*R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 1795. The charges for the
year 1551-1552 were £55,791 (Edward)

1552-1553 51,903 (Edward and Mary)

1553-1554 62,640 (Mary)

1554-1555 59,353 (Mary)

1555-1556 52,866 (Mary)

1556-1557 54,111 (Mary)

1557-1558 36,208 (Mary)

1558-1559 44,824 (Mary and Elizabeth)

"R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary VI, No. 21. The expenses of
the wardrobe for 1552-1553 were £ 5,373

1553-1554 12,307 (coronation charges included)

1554-1555 6,121

Finance:s of Edward VI and Mary 105

As a retrenchment measure the union of the various revenue
courts had been considered in Edward VFs reign, and author-
ized by parliament.^ Mary's government at once turned its at-
tention to the "new erected courts" and their "superfluous
charges." ParHament passed a second empowering act, and on
January 24, 1554, letters patent of the queen abolished the
Court of Augmentations and the Court of First Fruits and
Tenths, and united them with the Exchequer. The measure
might have been very reactionary in its effects, inasmuch as it
aimed to restore completely the ancient course of the Exchequer,
even to the use of the sheriffs as stewards of the crown lands. But
there were permissive clauses in the letters patent which made it
possible for the more modern system of the Augmentations court
to be continued for the administration of the crown lands in the
Augmentations office of the Exchequer.

Another great economy was worked in the matter of an-
nuities and pensions. They were taken under consideration at
the very beginning of the reign; it was found that annuities
of £1,597 to Englishmen and i2,590 to strangers were granted
during pleasure and might be stopped at once, while of the an-
nuities paid from the monastic lands it was suspected that some
were corruptly granted.*^ The council advised in January, 1554,
that no new grants of annuities or pensions be made; and al-
though some new grants were made, notably to those who helped
the queen at Fremlingham and to the officers of the dissolved
Courts of Augmentations and First Fruits, the total payments
for pensions and annuities decreased markedly. From Easter,

1555-1556 6,029

1557-1558 6,220

1558-1559 9,220 (coronation charges included)

R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, 1795, 3027-3032, inclusive. The
household and wardrobe took all the clear revenues of the Duchies of
Cornwall and Lancaster, and of the Court of Wards and Liveries in
Mary's reign. What was still lacking to meet their charges was paid from
the Exchequer.

•See above, p. 92. "Statutes," 7 Edward VI, c. 2.
' R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, I, No. 22.

106 Smith Coi.i.ii:ge: Studies in History

1557, to Easter, 1558, they were only £5,078, as compared with
£20,000 a year in Edward's day.^

Yet the problem that confronted Mary's government could
not be solved by economies and curtailments alone. The rise
in prices, the advance in the standard of living, and the higher
level of salaries led necessarily to an increase in the household
and wardrobe charges and in the cost of the permanent military
and naval establishments. With all the economies possible, the
total government disbursements in normal years of peace were
considerably greater than they had been in 1540, and constantly
tended to rise. It was essential that the government's reve-
nues be increased. The time was not yet ripe to use taxation to
supply new funds regularly. Nor could the depleted estates of
the crown be augmented on a grand scale as in the past. North-
umberland's attainder and execution restored some of the lands
which he had so unjustly gathered into his hands. As a possible
means of recovering more of the fraudulently alienated estates,
an investigation was proposed of all exchanges or gifts of land
granted since the death of Henry VUI,^ but nothing was done.
Despite all the alienations of the past two decades, the crown
estates were still absolutely very large, and if they could not be
increased in extent, they could be made much more productive
of revenue. That rise in prices which so increased the costs of
running the state increased also the potential value of the royal
lands. Rents responded to the advance in prices of agricultural
products, though the crown did not immediately or automatic-
ally profit by the rise in rents. In 1555 the committee of the
council appointed for lands and possessions thought it good that
a survey be made of all the queen's possessions in every shire
and hundred as the first step toward increasing her majesty's
income; but on the next points the sub-committees entirely dis-
agreed. One party favored the letting of all lands, possessions
and manors to farm for twenty-one years, as in that way the

* R. O., Exchequer of Receipt, Misc. Books, 259, Exchequer issues.
See appendix of disbursements of the Court of Exchequer.
*R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, I, No. 5.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 107

revenue would be made more certain, and the expenses of
stewards, bailiffs, auditors, surveyors and receivers much re-
duced. ^^ "Farming" the revenues was beginning to find the
favor of the experts; it was concurrently urged for the cus-
toms, where the "example of other kingdoms and dominions"
showed how advantageous it was. The farming of the lands
and manors was not, however, adopted. More careful attention
was paid to the making of new leases, which were to be drawn
up only by the officers of the courts ; fines for entry seem to have
been increased, and rents raised. At any rate the land revenues
steadily increased throughout Mary's reign, and this increase
continued without interruption in Elizabeth's time. The clear
yield of the crown lands in the Court of Augmentations was
i26,883 in the year 1552-1553, the last year of Edward VI, and
the first of Mary; in the year 1556-1557 the yield of lands in the
Augmentations office of the Exchequer was £47,723, and in
the first year of Elizabeth £69,460.^^ In the Duchy of Lancaster
the issues of crown lands show a similar, but smaller increase,
from £6,628 in the year 1552-1553, to £7,808 in the year 1558-
1559.12 The land revenues thus incremented again became the
most important in the state.

But though land was the chief source of wealth in early
Tudor times, investments were also taking other forms. Com-
mercial wealth, especially the riches derived from foreign com-
merce, had for a long time been rising to a more exalted place in
the national economy. The appearance of Edward I's customs,
the old customs of 1276 and the new customs of 1302, is an
evidence of the recognition of this. The growing importance
and power of commercial wealth was amply illustrated by the
aid which the Hanseatic League gave to Edward IV, and the
renewed concessions which the league was able to extort from

'°R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, VI, No. 22; B. M., Addi-
tional MSS., 12504, ff. 164, 166; Titus, B. IV, f. 135.

"R. O., Augmentations Office, Treasurer's Roll of Accounts, No. 8;
R. O., Exchequer of Receipt, Declaration Books, Pells, I; B. M. Lans-
downe MSS., 4, f. 182.

"R. O., Duchy of Lancaster, Accounts Various, bundle VIII.

108 Smith ColIvEge: Studie:s in History

him in the treaty of Utrecht. It was also in this reign that the
merchants of the Staple at Calais assumed the responsibility for
the maintenance of the English garrison there, using for this
purpose the wool customs which they paid. The importance of
the wealth of foreign commerce was recognized by Henry VII,
and he aimed to increase it. He could not endure, said Bacon,
to see trade sick. The commercial treaty of Medino del Campo
of 1489 with Spain, securing reciprocal freedom for English
and Spanish merchants in Spain and in England; the treaties
with Florence and Norway, and the Intercursus Magnus; and
the aid which he gave to merchants in the form of loans^^ show
his zeal for stimulating foreign trade. His motives were not
exclusively the altruism of the paternal despot. First in his
mind was the increase of the customs duties in the ports. Some
of the loans to merchants specifically provided for the import
of a certain amount of goods within a certain time. Henry de-
signed to use the increasingly important commercial wealth as the
subsidiary basis of a revenue system resting chiefly on land.
Inasmuch as commerce was a very delicate organism, perhaps
easily injured by increases in duties, Henry VII made only un-
important alterations in the existing scales. He provided easy
conditions for the growth of commerce, satisfying himself with
the augmented revenues coming from a larger bulk of transac-
tions. He also tried to abolish the exemptions and privileges of
foreign merchants in England, including the Hanseatic League,
and to secure more faithful fulfillment of their duties by the
custom house officials. At first the value of goods upon which
the duty was paid was that declared by the merchant on his
oath, but in 1507 an official Book of Rates showing the value

^*The surplus which Henry VII accumulated in the course of his reign
was not withdrawn from circulation and laid up in solid gold and silver
money in great chests, as is generally believed. (Cf. Cunningham, Growth,
I, 545, and also I, 487). It was advanced to merchants in London
Italian, Flemish and English, on certain easy conditions, for the advance-
ment of trade. R. O., Treasury of Receipt, Misc. Books, 214, Accounts of
the Treasurer of the Chamber.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 109

officially fixed was issued for London. ^^ This local book was
made the basis for a national Book of Rates in 1536, applying
to the whole kingdom. The customs revenue steadily increased
throughout the reign of Henry VII. This healthy growth con-
tinued for much of the period of Henry VIII, but in his latter
years the returns from customs fluctuated, and in the time of
Edward VI they declined. ^^ The prosperity of the trading
classes was shown by their ability to purchase land in great
quantities. The prestige of English merchants abroad was so
great that the credit of London merchants would secure loans
in Flanders for which the credit of the king was not sufficient;
their resources were again indicated by the ability of the Mer-
chant Adventurers and the merchants of the Staple to advance
great sums to the king by way of loans. By the time of Edward
VI the influence of the London merchants had become so great
as to secure the revocation of the privileges of the Steelyard
and to undertake the beginnings of the Muscovy Company in
the voyage of Willoughby and Chancellor in 1553. These are
all indications of a vigorous and increasing foreign trade in the
middle of the sixteenth century. The decline in Edward's cus-
toms revenues meant not a decline in English trade, but a mal-
adjustment of the revenue system. For this there were several
causes. There was laxness and dishonesty in the custom houses
and dues were not truly paid.^^ More important than this, all
dues were collected on the valuations of the national books of

" N. S. B. Gras, "Tudor Books of Rates," Quarterly Journal of Eco-
nomics, XXVI, 766ff.

"The average receipts 1538-1539 to 1546-1547 were £40,120 a year;
Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, II, p. 12. The receipts in the year
1550-1551 were £23,386 in the ports in England and £2,511 at Calais. The
Calais customs were, however, unusually small this year. In 1548-1549
they had been £6,752 and in 1549-1550 £4,164. B. M., Additional MSB.,
30,198.

"R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, XIII, Nos. 49, 50, charges of
loss to the queen through fraudulent weighing of wools. "Historical MSS.
Commission, Hatfield MSS.," I, 148, complaint of great frauds in the cus-
tom house by the customers and controllers, who are often in business
themselves. Cf. Dowell, "History of Taxes," I, 180; Cunningham,
"Growth," I, 549.

110 Smith CoIvLe:gs Studie:s in History

rates of 1536 and 1545, which were themselves the valuations
fixed in 1507. With the rise in prices, these valuations no longer
corresponded to the actual market prices of goods in the middle
of the century. In the third place articles like wool, on which
the customs revenue was formerly very great, were exported in
smaller quantities, while the existing duty on commodities like
cloth, beer, and wine, in the increased exchange of which the
growth of commerce consisted, was too low. As far as the
official valuations were concerned the situation was clearly rec-
ognized by a royal commission in Edward VI's reign. Pointing
out the discrepancy between the market price and the rated
value, the commission declared it meet to take measures for the
profit of this custom, and that additional returns from new
rates or valuations were very necessary. ^'^ A committee of the
council studied the matter in Mary's reign, and reported: '*It
seems necessary that goods of all sorts are imported and ex-
ported and shall be specified in a book with their true modern
value, and that customs and subsidies [of tonnage and poundage]
shall be paid according to the true value and quality of the
same goods at these times.''^^ On May 28, 1558, the new Book
of Rates with modern valuations, based on recent inquiry was
issued. It raised the older rates by approximately seventy-five
per cent, on the average. The privy seal prefaced to the book
of rates remedied the decrease in the customs caused by the fall-
ing off in the export of wool. Because "much less wool is
shipped . . . and much more wool made into cloth within
our Realm and carried out of the same in cloth by way of mer-
chandise, . . . and because the custom and subsidy of wool
carried out of this realm in wool doth far exceed the custom and
subsidy of so much wool after the rate clothed. . . .We therefore
minding in reasonable sort to maintain our customs as the most
ancient and certain revenue of our crown . . . have as-
sessed upon cloths to be carried forth by way of merchandise

"Gras, "Tudor Books of Rates," 774; B. M., Additional MSS., 30198.
"R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, VI, No. 22; B. M., Titus,
B. IV, f. 35.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 111

[new] rates for the customs and subsidy."^^ By the new im-
post which took the place of the older customs and subsidy, the
cloth trade was made to contribute a fairer share to the neces-
sities of the state. A few weeks before the issue of the new book
of rates, and the impost on cloth, the council had laid similar im-
posts on the wines of France and French dry wares imported,
and on beer exported. ^^^ The increase brought by the new val-
uations, the new duties and the greater strictness in the custom
houses which the council enjoined was immediate. From
i25,900 in 1550-1551, and i29,315 in the fourth year of Mary's
reign, the customs revenues rose to i82,797 in the first year of
Queen Elizabeth, divided as follows, — old customs £25,797; for
the rate of wares newly appointed i20,000; custom of the Staple
£4,000; new increase upon cloth £26,000; new increase upon
wines £4,000; the custom of beer £3,000.^1 The new Book of
Rates and the new duties or imposts were the second great con-
tribution of Mary to a rehabilitation of the finances. As in the
case of the lands, Elizabeth reaped the advantages of Mary's
innovations. Elizabeth's councillors extended the new imposts
to all wines, and reissued the Book of Rates at various times.
The customs became of almost equal importance with the land
revenues as the basis for national finance, just as commercial
wealth was tending to greater equality with landed wealth.

But it must not be supposed that all was smooth sailing in
the financial history of Mary's reign. The constructive policies
were slow in their development. Throughout the reign the gov-
ernment needed money, for the support of the increased estab-
lishments, and, in the last year, for the war with France, which
was fortunately quick and decisive. But crown lands were not
sold, and the coinage of debased money was not resumed. The
government depended chiefly on_ loans and taxes, to meet its_
exigent demands. The debts beyond seas had been decreased in

" B. M., Unsdowne MSS., 3, f . 143.

=* "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., VI, 305, April 17, 1558.

"B. M., Lansdowne MSS., 4, f. 182; an estimate or report on the
revenues for the year 1559-1560 prepared for Cecil, and annotated in his
hand.

112 Smith Colle:ge Studies in History

the last months of Northumberland's administration to i61,000
by midsummer, 1553. This reduction was made by allowing the
payments in the various government departments to fall very
much further into arrears. ^^ Northumberland was anxious to
pay the debts of the realm abroad, the Flanders loans ; Mary's
council seems to have decided that it was better to pay the
charges and expenditures of the state promptly, and to accept
frankly, as necessary aids in doing this, further foreign loans,
even at twelve and fourteen per cent, which the future could
redeem. As in the latter part of Edward VI's reign. Sir
Thomas Gresham was the general agent in Flanders for the
loans. Between March 21, 1554, and July 31, 1557, he repaid
forty-nine bonds, with interest and brokerage charges of for-
eign bankers, together with certain sums due to the Staplers and
Merchant Adventurers to the amount of £3 12,084-5 j.-9d. He
negotiated new loans, many of them prolongations of former
loans to the value of i234,733-4j.-4d. The total interest and
prolongation charges for the period were i3 1,224, which is pos-
sibly only a small part of the saving realized by the state by the
prompt payment of its officers, servants, purveyors and other
like creditors. For certain money, 300,750 ducats, raised by
bills in Antwerp, he had to go to Spain. The money was de-
livered to him by the bankers of Medina de Rioseca and Medina
del Campo at Seville ; from Seville he had to carry it to the sea-
side packed in great boxes, some of which broke with a loss of
231 ducats, — which the commissioners refused to allow when
his account was made before them. In his dealings, such was
"his wisdom," as his declaration of account modestly phrases
it, that he raised the value of English money in exchange to be
of more value than the money of Flanders, two shillings in the
pound in March and April, 1554, one shilHng in May, 1557, and
six pence in August, 1555.^3

^^ R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, I, No. 14. The foreign
debt is put at i72,000 at about the same time in another paper, IV, No. 6.

^^R. O., Declared Accounts, Pipe Office, No. 18. The accounts of
Gresham's transactions are continued in Nos, 23, 26.

Finances of Edward VI and Mary 113

Though most of the loans were raised in Flanders, the queen
occasionally called upon the City of London for advances. On
the first Sunday of September, 1553, she demanded i20,000 of
the City of London. The sum of £10,000 was actually ad-
vanced, and repaid within the month.^^ In August, 1556, the
City of London advanced £6,000.2^ In March, 1558, after the
loss of Calais the queen demanded a loan of 100,000 marks
(i66,666-13.y.-4d.) of the city, which was reduced to i20,150-
12.y.-ld. when it was paid. The queen pledged lands worth
£l,007-lOs.-7j4^' a year ^or repayment, and paid interest at
twelve per cent, for the taking of which, contrary to the usury
laws, the queen had to issue special licenses to the London alder-
men.^^ The Merchant Adventurers were so *' forward" and
liberal at this time that the queen wrote them a special letter of
thanks, promising them her special favor in any reasonable
suits. 2^

The taxes of parliamentary grant used to eke out the crown
resources were the ordinary subsidies and fifteenths and tenths
of the laity, and the subsidies of the clergy. In her first parlia-
ment the queen remitted the last subsidy granted to Edward,
unpaid at his death. In 1555 a subsidy payable in 1556 and
1557 was granted by the laity, and a subsidy of six shillings in
the pound by the clergy. Parliament was willing at this time
to make a further grant of two fifteenths and tenths which the
queen was graciously contented to refuse with her thanks.^s In
January, 1558, as a war measure, a subsidy and one fifteenth
and tenth were granted, besides a clerical subsidy of eight shill-
ings in the pound. Of interest in connection with the subsidies
is not the frequency with which they were asked, nor their
yield,2^ but the stiffening resistance of parliament to the taxes,

^ For the value of the Marian taxes, see Appendix.
" Wriothesley's Chronicle, II, 100 (Camden Society Publications,
n. s., Vol. 20) ; "Acts of the privy council," n. s., IV, 343,353.
^'Acts of the privy council," n. s., V, 321.
"" R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, XIV, No. 83.
=" R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, XII, No. 66.
^"Commons' Journal," I, 28, 31.

114 Smith CoIvLEgk Studiks in History

and the insistence of the government on more exact and com-
plete payment, with the punishment of those who sought to
evade the taxes. ^^

Near the end of the reign too, the century-old device of the
forced loan, half arbitrary tax, and half loan, was revamped.
In 1556 the richest subjects of the kingdom were called upon to
lend the queen ilOO apiece, to be repaid within a month of All
Saints (November 1), 1557.^^ In September, 1557, to raise the
money to repay the levy of the past year, and to supply other
needed sums, a more elaborate loan was practiced. Commis-
sioners sat in each district, as in the case of a subsidy, and rated
each man's value with the assistance of the subsidy books, and
the testimony of neighbors. Having made the assessments, the
commissioners were to collect the money, taking not under
ilO, nor more than 100 marks (i66-13.y.-4d.). Those who firm-
ly refused to pay without cause were to be cited before the
council, as many persons indeed were. Certain counties, Derby,
Chester, Lancaster, York, and Nottingham were exempted from
the loan, because of the service which they had "done us in the
war amongst our enemies the Scots." The loan realized il09,-
267-Os.Ad.; of this £42,100 was used to repay the loan of 1556,
and the rest was apparently used for the general purposes of the
state, since the recovery of Calais was not immediately at-
tempted.^^ Though privy seals were given as receipts to those
who had contributed, no promise of repayment was made as in
the previous year, and no repayment seems ever to have been
made.

Note must be taken finally of the retrogressive steps in the
financial history of Mary's time. These are closely and inti-
mately connected with the political and especially the religious

1

^"The Commons' Journal notes "arguments" on the necessity of sum-
moning members of the house before the queen in connection with all
the taxes of the reign. For insistence on more complete and speedier pay-
ment see "Acts of the Privy Council," n. s., V, VI.

'' B. M., Cleopatra, F. VI, f. 299, a privy seal for the loan.
"^R. O., State Papers, Domestic, Mary, XI, Nos. 44, 45, 46; XVI,
No. 49; XIII, No. 36. The last is the account of Richard Wilbraham,
receiver-general of the loan.

FiNANCEis OF Edward VI and Mary 115

situation; they proceeded partly from Mary's sense of loyalty
and gratitude to the church, partly from her sense of stern honor
and exact justice. The confiscations and forfeits accruing to
the crown by the ruin of her enemies, Mary balanced by restora-
tion to name and lands of persons attainted by her father and
brother.33 She reerected the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem,
she restored the abbey of Westminster, and returned the mon-
astic lands in Ireland to their original uses. She was even re-
solved to restore all the monastic lands in crown possession to
the church, and actually ordered perfect declarations of all her
revenues made and presented to this end. "She preferred the
salvation of her soul to the maintenance of her imperial dignity,
if it could not be furnished without such assistance." But the
councillors would not take the necessary steps; their passive
resistance defeated her purpose.^* She was however able to
accomplish the surrender of the first fruits and tenths of the
clergy and the alienation of the rectories, parsonages, glebes,
benefices impropriate and other spiritual livings in the hands of
the crown, though the bill was bitterly opposed in parliament.^^
The surrender was made as a gift to the church, to be placed at
the disposition of the Cardinal Pole, for the augmentation of
the poor livings of priests. ^^ The surrender of the first fruits
and tenths alone, would have been a dead loss to the royal reve-
nues of something less than £25,000 a year. But the alienation was
not so immediately serious as Mary's enemies in Elizabeth's
reign and since have alleged. For the gift to the church carried
with it the payment of pensions and corrodies of the late monks,
nuns and chantry priests to a very great sum. The pensions of
the chantry priests alone were £11,147 a year;^'^ the entire pay-
ments of this nature were £44,861 -8.y.-9d. in the year 1550-

"A paper in State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, I, No. 64, gives the
value of lands returned to such persons £9,796.

^ Dixon, "History of the Church of England," IV, 359.

^ See Dixon, "History," IV, 449, note, for extracts from the Commons*
and Lords' Journals, noting the debates and arguments.

" "Statutes," 2 and 3, Philip and Mary, c. 4.

""Historical MSS. Commission," Hatfield MSS., Vol. I, 75.

116 Smith CoIvLe:ge Studies in History

1551.^* In time these pensions would cease, and then there
would be at the disposal of the church a goodly sum for the
benefit of its most poorly paid priests, but it was eighteen months
after the passage of the act of surrender before the fund suf-
ficed to do more than pay the pensions besides the remission of
the tenths of the smallest livings. The net loss to the crown
was not very great ; before the pensions became markedly small-
er than the gross value of the "gift," it was resumed. The
greatest and practically the only change which Elizabeth made
in the financial policy of her sister and her sister's government
was the revocation of the various restorations which Mary had
made to the church; especially the repeal of the act of 1555, and
the resumption by the crown of the first fruits and tenths, and
the spiritual Hvings.

In the history of the finances of the Tudor sovereigns, the
critical years are those of Edward VI and Mary. Under the
first, the system built up by Henry VII, Henry VIII and Crom-
well nearly broke down, through the misgovernment of the
times and the continuance of war drains. Had it done so,
there must have come great constitutional changes in connection
with the organization of a new system. But Mary's govern-
ment was strong and capable enough to gather together the re-
maining resources of the old system, and so conserve, husband
and increase their productivity, that, with the careful parsimony
of Elizabeth it worked for another half century. The question
of a new organization was put oflf until the seventeenth century;
when it forced itself upon the Stuarts, they were too weak and
incompetent to deal with it. The example of Holland, and the
Long Parliament were necessary before the new system could be
set up, and with it, the promise of the Confirmatio Cartarum
be realized.

B. M., Additional MSS., 30198.

APPENDIX

Appendix

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TABIvE IX

THE COURT OF FIRST FRUITS AND TENTHS

(In Mary's reign, the office of the First Fruits and Tenths in the
Exchequer)

Christmas, 1547, to Christmas, 1548:

L s. d.

Arrearages charged upon the Treasurer 37,457-3-8

Compositions for First Fruits 5,208-15- 4

Tenths of the Clergy 14,203- 8- 9

Fees of officers of the Court 428- 1- 3

Paid to the Judges, and the Lady Anne of Cleves 2,542- 4- 1

Paid on Warrants of the Council 1,479- 2- 3

Necessary payments 396- 1- 8

For discharge of Issues and Arrearages upon Certificates
of Bishops as well by decrees of this court as other-
wise ;. 1,125-14- 5

Rewards 497- 9- 4

Money inprested by virtue of letters from the Council 14,969-10-11

Arrearages, carried over 35,431- 3- 9

Christmas, 1553, to December 31, 1557:

Issues of First Fruits, by reason of the first fruits of all
incubancies for which the incubents made composition
with their Majesties from Christmas, 1553, to January

1, 1555 28,367-13- 1

Same, year 1555 5,793- 9- 0

Same, year 1556 1,119-18-11

Same, year 1557 1,243- 7- 1

Clerical Subsidy, 1 Mary 1,399- 1- 0

Clerical Subsidy, 1 and 2 Philip and Mary 1,302- 1- 4

Clerical Subsidy, 2 and 3 Philip and Mary 1,164- 3- 0

Foreign Receipts 36- 5-10

Total Receipts 67,335-16- 1

Exoneration of First Fruits both by writ of the King and
Queen under Privy Seal, as by decision of the Barons

of the Exechequer 14,704-14-11

Money delivered into the Exchequer 40,230- 1- 5

Arrearages, carried over 12,401- 0- 7

Total credits 67,335-16- 1

Appendix 135

TABI.E X
SUBSIDIES AND FIFTEENTHS AND TENTHS

The subsidy granted 1545:

The second payment, due in April, 1547, £ 91,244

The second fifteenth and tenth granted in 1545, due in June, 1547 29,156

The Relief granted to Edward VI in 1548 :

The first payment, due May, 1549 53,899

The second payment, due April, 1550 47,449

The third payment, due April, 1551 39,855

The fourth payment, due April, 1552 43,261

Two fifteenths and tenths granted to Edward VI in 1553, and

paid in Mary's reign 58,000

The subsidy granted to Edward VI in 1553 was remitted by Mary.

The subsidy granted to Mary in 1555 :

The first payment, due March, 1556 67,983

The second payment, due May, 1557 76,795

The subsidy granted to Mary in 1558, to be paid in June, 1558 134.445

The fifteenth and tenth granted to Mary in 1558, to ibe paid

in November, 1558 29,000

CLERICAL SUBSIDIES.

A subsidy of six shillings in the pound of the value of their bene-
fices granted by the Clergy in 1548, to Edward VI *

A subsidy of six shillings in the pound of the value of their bene-
fices granted by the Clergy in 1555 to Mary: *
A subsidy of six shillings in the pound of the value of their bene-
fices granted by the Clergy in 555 to Mary :

The first payment due in October, 1556 £ 14,078

The second payment due in October, 1557 13,145

The third payment due in October, 1558 (estimated) 14,000

A subsidy of eight shillings in the pound of the value of their
beneficies granted by the Clergy in 1558 to Mary.
Estimated yield, in four payments due in March, 1558, 1559,

1560 and 1561 56,000

NOTE: An asterisk indicates that the record is wanting.

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